Picture Window
by David Andersen
Title
Picture Window
Artist
David Andersen
Medium
Photograph - Photo
Description
"Is that where you are going to stand?" He asked.
"Yes", I replied,
"What lens are you going to shoot with?" Like he was going to convince me that I was making a mistake and talk me out of it.
"I will use more than one."
"Well, you did get here first!"
That’s right, I did. Not that it was my intent when I came an hour and a half before even the early comers. I just couldn’t sleep, so I stood out there shooting stars and did some light painting of the arch shivering at zero degrees awaiting the glorious, and when I say glorious I mean glorious sunrise at Mesa Arch.
I was there the night before and a couple, I think from Chicago, stood on the arch and looked over the valley below. They had been to Zions, Bryce, and Arches and said this is the best place yet. I told them they really need to see it at sunrise, but they had to catch a plane in Salt Lake City at 9:00 a.m.
It is something everyone should experience at least once in their life, looking through the arch like a picture window as the sun comes up underneath, bouncing light up the cliff below to glow the underside of the arch. The sun flare under the arch is an iconic shot and because of the ever-growing photography hobby, there is usually forty or fifty who come to take pictures or witness this glorious event where there is really only a good place for six to stand to shoot it.
So as it gets closer to sunrise, lots of people filter in and they start to make a bow on either side of me to get closer to the arch and also, irritatingly enough, into my frame. One lady who showed up right before sunrise and trying hard not to be intrusive said she would just stand back behind me and shoot over my shoulder. That was just silly because there is a lot of me to shoot over or around. By now we are already tripod tip to tripod tip. I told her to come up and cross between our tripod legs but she said she didn’t want to be a bother. I told her she would be a bother back there because when I go to get a different lens out of my bag and bend over my big butt was going to knock her tripod over. Her bearded husband just stood in the back with shoulders scrunched forward holding a cup of coffee like a squirrel holding a nut.
There is always one in the crowd; a big-mouthed braggadocious photographer who comes more for the ohs and ahs of the amateurs than an actual photo. This one that day drove with his buddy all the way from Salt Lake, some 250 miles that morning for this sunrise photo session.
He had a tripod head that was calibrated to click just the right amount to overlay pictures to stitch together panoramas so that he could print a great big picture for his office. He seemed to swell with superbia showing off this little gadget.
I don’t usually say much, I try not to feed the monster, but I asked how big he was planning to print it.
"Forty inches."
I just smiled.
I had a picture of Goblin Valley printed eighteen feet that hangs above the door at work, and I have a gorgeous print of Horseshoe Bend hanging in the family room that is five feet wide by three feet tall. Both are panorama overlays taken without any little incremental-square-with-the-world device. But I kept that information to myself.
People come for the sunrise. They have read photography tips telling them that just before the sun crests and for few moments as it breaks the horizon is golden hour. Then after the sun clears the horizon they are off to get out of the cold and maybe into some breakfast. Many times the best picture I get is after the crowd gives up.
This photo was taken after most of the people had gone. It was nice because I didn’t have to clone people and tripods out of the frame. It is 25 individual wide-angle overlapping frames and no, the arch doesn’t really curve that way, but when I stand in the middle and shoot each direction I am shooting 160 degrees so when it is stitched together it curves because I took it in an arc which gives it a beautiful, 3d-ish stretch
Uploaded
January 5th, 2015
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