Corral Pink Sand Dunes, Straw & Moon

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Corral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Kane County, Utah
mid afternoon Tuesday June 6, 1995, slide 95B_24-20
Olympus OM-4T, 50mm Zuiko macro, Benbo Trekker
Drum scanned 35mm Kodachrome 64 to 100mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature top mid left

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An unusually cold and violent late spring cold front swept over Utah the day before I made this image. Winds were so strong that news stories reported vehicles overturned on Interstate 80 near the Great Salt Lake. In the morning, I awoke in the Bryce Canyon area to sub freezing temperatures and a crystal clear blue sky. In the afternoon I drove to Corral Sand Dunes State Park near Kanab just above the Arizona border. The small park at a 6,000 foot elevation has extensive light rust colored sand dunes that have eroded from the surrounding Triassic Period rock. Nearby are the Vermillion Cliffs that is part of the Grand Staircase, a geologic sequence of rock above the Grand Canyon 70 miles south. Geologists theorize the rusty coloration common in many formations of the Colorado Plateau resulted from iron bearing minerals which oxidized then seeped down within solution into lower laying marine sand deposits. Triassic Period rocks were formed more than 200 million years ago when the western ocean edge of the much smaller than present North American continent was within central Utah.

That afternoon was breezy, cold, with a striking deep blue sunny sky. I dressed warmly then set out across the bright dunes. Walking in dunes is strenuous because of difficulty pushing off during each step against soft sand. I recall wishing I had left some of my clothing back in the car. I walked maybe a couple miles over an hour or two and became frustrated. ATV's are allowed to travel in most of the park and their tracks were in all areas I walked. Of course those folks were the primary users of the park too. As a photographer the tracks marred larger scale scenery I might have been able to shoot thus began looking for smaller scale subjects.

Here and there, plants including dried grass stuck out of the sand. I looked for some I might shoot up against the blue sky and found this subject.

First tried to frame it with a wide-angle lens then went to my normal lens. Framing the subject took quite some time, as I did not wish to include much foreground in front of the straw in order to achieve adequate depth of field. After setting up I waited quite a long time, over an hour. Heck I didn't expect to find much of a better shot in the area so stubbornly stuck it out. Fortunately a partial moon had been slowly rising during the wait such that it was now positioned about two-thirds up the frame, so I readjusted to center it at that golden point. Eventually the considerable breeze momentarily waned enough to still the straw for my slow shutter speed.

Of the thousands of images I've taken over many years, this Kodachrome image captured the absolute beauty of blue sky better than any I have taken. Having had a considerable time to watch it waiting to take the shot, I can add that it was certainly one of the best blues I've ever enjoyed. The resolution of the image is just enough to pick up the very fine grains of the beautiful corral sand. And the warm light reflected off the corral sand enhanced the translucent light glowing from sunlight within the straw. A perfect complementary substrate. Note a few leaves of still alive green grass in front of the dried golden straw.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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