Earlier this month a few friends and I took a trip to Southern Utah to shoot some places we discovered on Google Earth. Utah has so much mind boggling landscapes it feels unfair to the other states. Don't get me wrong Oregon is freaking beautiful and diverse, but an area like Painted Hills in Oregon, is overshadowed by nearly any off highway scene in southern Utah.
During our travels a constant refrain in my truck was FU!. We shortened it from Fuck Utah. To be clear... we did not mean "Fuck Utah" we meant "Fuck. Utah."
One thing that you need to know before heading out there... Spring in Utah is unpredictable and constantly changing (which are pretty much the same thing). Our second night camping in Valley of the Gods we were greeted with constant winds of 40+mph and gusts of 70+mph. Needless to say. Drones were out of the question... hell, even standing upright was out of the question. Fortunately the next morning the winds dropped to about 15mph, managable for the drones. I shot the image above that morning.
We took off later that day for Capital Reef National Park... did I mention the weather unpredictability???
On our way there we drove over a 8200' pass in a snow storm. Once at Capital Reef we ducked out on a side road to the north end of the park to go to Cathedral Valley. It was close to 15ยบ. On a related note... I travel with a offroad trailer called a Black Series HQ21. We made it no problem crossing the Fremont River and getting to the camp area. But all my water froze out there. Fortunately we had a couple gallons in jugs that allowed us to make coffee... which was basically the only thing we gave a shit about.
Over the next couple days, or weeks, I will post some images from the trip.
One thing I can tell you... IF you want to find unique locations in Utah, or anywhere for that matter, Google Earth is an amazing tool. I have used it to calculate closest access, drone shots, altitude, and composition. Then drive to that GPS location and got my image. I cannot stress enough how cool that is.