Ronny Gabriels Photography

Delicate Arch in Arches National Park is one of those things that has been shot a million times before.  If you go to any search engine and type in "Delicate Arch" you will get thousands of hits.  What you will also notice is that most of these hits show you the arch from its best known side, which is right in front of it with the mountains in the background. The reason I like my rendition is the fact that it's still clearly a picture of Delicate Arch, but not from a side or in a composition you have seen before often. Now of course, there is a little story behind this shot.

When we arrived in Arches National Park last year, the shot I really wanted was actually the very well known shot with the mountains in the back at sundown.  The vantage point for that shot however was a 1.5 hour hike up the mountain. Now normally that wouldn't have stopped us for a minute, but after two and a half weeks of hikes in National Parks, that night we decided not to go up and instead go to the upper viewpoint on the base of the mountain. We were tired and even the walk to the viewpoint proved harder than we had anticipated.  But we got there, with very heavy winds seemingly trying to blow us back to the parking lot. We stayed there to watch the sunset and I took a number of pictures of the arch. At first I was a little disappointed and I tried to zoom in with my long lens to get the arch to fill the frame, but by doing so, I noticed that a lot of people were up there "spoiling" the picture.  So I decided the blur those people out by taking some shots like you see above. And I have to say it worked.  We talked about maybe heading up to the other vantage point the day after, but we never got there due mostly to fatigue. I have to say that actually I wasn't sorry because the drive of "I really have to get that shot" was gone. The shot I really wanted, I never got, but the photo I got, was much more original! So all I have to say is, don't get too hung up about a particular shot you want. You might be surprised what other opportunities lay just on the other side of the mountain.

Funny side note, when we were standing there watching the arch, Merel actually spotted a woman in her wedding dress posing under the arch. With the binoculars and long lens we saw that there was indeed a photo shoot going on under the arch of a woman in her wedding dress wearing no shoes.  We're not quite sure how she got there (and where, if anywhere, she changed her clothes), but it was a strange sight, a photographer, an assistant holding a reflector and a bride high up on the mountain that can only be reached by hiking up there. Some photographers have to really work for their money ;-)