Posts Tagged ‘moab’

Observations on the Symbolic Nature of the Arches National Park Landscape

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I believe Utah, or at least Moab, should appro­pri­ate the tourist tag line “Moab is for Lovers.”  What’s sexy about Virginia?  Because it has the word “vir­gin” in it?  Are they the world’s cap­i­tal pro­ducer of nov­elty con­doms?    Moab, and Arches National Park in par­tic­u­lar, is inher­ently a very sex­u­ally sym­bolic place.   It’s for lovers with the sense of humor of a 4th grader.  And I think that’s all of us.

Look, you’ve been read­ing this blog, so you’ve seen the pic­tures.  The phal­lic nature of many of the sand­stone for­ma­tions is unde­ni­able.  Some of them are quite explicit in imi­tat­ing the shape, and aren’t sim­ply taller than they are wide (the Men’s Club stan­dard require­ment to use some­thing as an allu­sion to a penis is defined as sim­ply as that).  I double-​​checked this obser­va­tion with my wife to make sure that it wasn’t sim­ply a trick of the mas­cu­line mind.  No, no.  There are penises every­where in Arches National Park.

But Arches National Park is any­thing but phal­lo­cen­tric.  It’s got plenty of vagi­nal allu­sions in the land­scape as well.  Its very name­sake evokes a cer­tain female organ.  Not quite so ele­gantly, I sup­pose, but if you really squint and stretch your metaphor­i­cal brain, it kind of makes sense.

I don’t want to say that the land­scape acted as an aphrode­siac, but– the land­scape acts as an aphrode­siac. For uh, other cou­ples that, we, uh, saw doing it?

Moab is miss­ing out on an entirely dif­fer­ent tourist tac­tic.  “Moab is for lovers–huh huh, it totally looks like a giant penis.”

Call me, Moab Tourist Board!

Photo: Garden of Eden

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is the Garden of Eden for­ma­tion in Arches National Park near Moab, right at sun­set. I for­get the name of those moun­tains in the back­ground. Hmm. Should prob­a­bly crop this one down closer to the horizon.

Photo: Garden of Eden

Photo: Turret Arch

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This is Turret Arch in Arches National Park, a lit­tle before sun­set. This one is not HDR, unlike a lot of other shots from my trip.

Good morn­ing, web world.

Photo: Turret Arch

Photo: Spires

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Post-​​expedition ennui is over­whelm­ing me today. Things turned com­pli­cated and sour at Sarah’s work while we were gone. I’ve had lit­tle suc­cess in my job search, and the need to do so grows ever more press­ing as Sarah finds it harder and harder to deal with work­ing in a field she never had any desire in which to work. She wants to be a teacher, and for that, we need to get her back into school. To do that, we need to get me a job with benefits.

Photo: Spires

Bonus Photo: The Fiery Furnace at Dawn

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ll prob­a­bly end up pho­to­shop­ping out the lens flare later on, but right now I kind of like it. This is another HDR from Arches National Park at dawn(ish). I was going to shoot this same pic­ture at sun­set last night but couldn’t be arsed. Have to pace your­self on these kinds of adven­tures or you’ll get exhausted too soon. Yesterday evening was a rest period.

Bonus Photo: The Fiery Furnace at Dawn

Photo: Sunrise Behind The Windows

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Today’s a dri­ving day. We’re going to round up our belong­ings here in a bit and get on the road to Page, Arizona. Page is near Antelope Canyon, a place I’ve been antic­i­pat­ing pho­tograph­ing since I started tak­ing nature pho­tog­ra­phy more seriously.

This is an HDR from the dawn shoot­ing, look­ing back towards the sun and through the North and South Window Arches. You can kind of see Turret Arch peek­ing through there too.

Photo: Sunrise Behind The Windows

Photo: Dawn in Arches National Park

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Up at the crack of dawn and back to the park this morn­ing. Sadly, clouds had gath­ered to the east, obscur­ing that golden light I wanted to paint on my can­vas. We had about 10 min­utes of golden hour instead of an hour. Got a few good shots though.

After dawn shoot­ing, we drove to the Needles District of Canyonlands. It was nice, but not nearly as impres­sive as Arches National Park. However, we got to see pet­ro­glyphs , which were amaz­ing. I had never seen them before myself. More pho­tos later. Now is the time for rest­ing. Maybe more sun­set pho­tog­ra­phy tonight, maybe not. We’ll see how we feel in a cou­ple of hours.

Photo: Dawn in Arches National Park

Photo: Double Arch

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

We arrived in Moab a lit­tle before noon. The light at this time of the day is ter­ri­ble, so we did some scout­ing, fig­ur­ing out what the best van­tage points would be when the sun was set­ting. Then we headed into town and ate at a “cafe.” I think “cafe” is code in tourist traps for “over­priced.” We’re now holed up in a Motel 6 wait­ing for the sun to get a lit­tle lower on the hori­zon. Then we’ll head back into the park and try to get some honest-​​to-​​goodness land­scape photos.

The plan is to shoot dawn in the park again tomor­row, then drive to Canyonlands in the after­noon to scout. Monday morn­ing, we’ll shoot Canyonlands and then get on the road to the Grand Canyon. Wash and repeat, basi­cally. We’re hav­ing a blast!

Photo: Double Arch