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UltravioletPhotography

Arches Natoinal Park


OlDoinyo

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Arches is one of Utah's smaller but more popular national parks. Some of you may recognize it as the setting of Edward Abbey's classic memoir Desert Solitaire, wherein he chronicles his experience there as a ranger in 1956-57, when the park was far wilder and less developed than it is today. (Ironically, the landscape is not quite true desert, but rather a semiarid scrub brush/steppe biome with 22cm annual precipitation.) In the park, a layer of Entrada sandstone has been weathered by moisture and freezing action into narrow fins and pinnacles, which frequently become perforated to become the park's eponymous arches.

 

Many of these have been photographed hundreds of thousands of times if not more, and coming up with any photograph of them that will not seem trite is a challenge comparable to photographing the Matterhorn or Eiffel Tower. But does invisible light photography offer a fresh look? I was in the area briefly and decided to give it a try, using the Sony A900 and several lenses (Asahi 20; Asahi 35; Lenox Laser pinhole; Steinheil 50; Makowski 500) as well as two filters, the Baader U2 and the U360/S8612 stack. The Makowski was used at f/32 and the pinhole at whatever it is (f/191?) The rest were used at f/16 if possible.The following images were obtained.

 

We begin with Skyline Arch, an easily accessed feature near the end of the road (Steinheil/Baader:)

 

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For good measure, here is a single-exposure IRG of the same scene (Tiffen 12:)

 

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One of the curious characteristics in the latter image is that the rock coating known as desert varnish, which is dark to the naked eye, absorbs little IR and shows up red in the image.

 

Near the Windows area stands Balanced Rock, one of the more famous landmarks, very close to where Abbey's camp was in the 1950s. I tried both pinhole and non-pinhole versions of this before deciding on the former (pinhole, Baader:)

 

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It does seem different from many photos I have seen of this rock spire.

 

Nearer the entrance, the Courthouse Wash area does not contain any arches, but there are numerous other striking rock formations, including the Three Gossips (Asahi 20/stack:)

 

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Delicate Arch is perhaps the most iconic feature of the park, and is depicted on the Utah license plate among other places. The iconic view of this feature is from an amphitheatre-like area at the end of the trail on the north side, and has been photographed by millions, including yours truly (see here and here if you are interested.) But there is a second, less well-known viewpoint from the south that often has more forgiving light and is also worth documenting, as I did with the Makowski and the Baader. The Makowski is notorious for somewhat soft focus and very tricky infinity focus, but I tried to minimize these effects as much as possible. There was also an uneven greenish hazing in some of the images that I suspect was IR leakage of the mirror enclosure, which I have tried to hide.

 

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I also grabbed an IR frame with an 093 filter:

 

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With this plus a visible frame (not shown,) I constructed a GBU frame:

 

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and an IRG frame:

 

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Ghost tourist figures can be spied in these last two if one looks closely.

 

I was in the arch-rich Windows area of the park the previous evening but did no invisible photography at that time.

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The second-last one (GBU) looks very similar to a normal visible light image (I think the rocks are brownish to the naked eye too). This isn't that surprising in itself, but has a pleasant look. I like that sky.
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I like these. I am also glad to see people can walk under and through it. Many things are blocked off, which becomes a limit to really enjoying them.
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Bill De Jager
I like these. I am also glad to see people can walk under and through it. Many things are blocked off, which becomes a limit to really enjoying them.

 

For now. Delicate Arch gets so much tourist use that it's often impossible to not have multiple people in the photo, I hear. I have to wonder if at some point people will be restricted to designated paths at that location to minimize wear and tear on the rock.

 

Desert varnish is fascinating stuff:

 

Desert varnish is the thin red-to-black coating found on exposed rock surfaces in arid regions. Varnish is composed of clay minerals, oxides and hydroxides of manganese and/or iron, as well as other particles such as sand grains and trace elements. The most distinctive elements are manganese (Mn) and iron (Fe).

Bacteria take manganese out of the environment, oxidize it, and cement it onto rock surfaces. In the process, clay and other particles also become cemented onto the rock. These bacteria microorganisms live on most rock surfaces.

The sources for desert varnish components come from outside the rock, most likely from atmospheric dust and surface runoff. Streaks of black varnish often occur where water cascades over cliffs.

 

https://www.nps.gov/...sertvarnish.htm

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  • 2 years later...

Postscript: March, 2023

 

I recently took these with the A900 and the Tamron 17mm lens with the U360/S8612 filter. Due to a possible filter wheel blunder, the chromaticity of these images is less than expected and I chose to work them up as sepia monochromes.

 

TheOrganjsmallexDSC00030.jpg.e31feff8b98a560ac0f9dac51cc053b0.jpg

LandscapeArchUVjsmallexDSC00103.jpg.5ddd479269b940d264397ef8dea517f4.jpg

 

Landscape Arch (second photo) is the longest in the park at 93.3 meters, and likely not long for this world. A large block fell from its underside in the 1990s. Nearby Wall Arch collapsed in 2008. Will this one be far behind?

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