Whenever I see a picture from Canyonlands National Park, I want to return and explore more of that magical place. I experienced this picture while on a quick and productive trip to Canyonlands and Arches National Parks a couple years ago. In the mornings I would hit Arches to do some pictures, then in the afternoons I would drive over to Canyonlands Island in the Sky district and make afternoon pictures. A night I would find a place to sleep in the back of the truck near Moab. It was a nice, welcome break from my usual wedding photography and portrait photography work.

For this picture I drove way out to the Grandview Point Overlook and was originally thinking of pictures mostly of the northern and western sides of the White Rim area. While waiting for the light I walked the 100 yards or so over to this eastern view of Gooseberry Canyon with the snag and had an idea of using my flashlight to hit the snag at sunset.

Then I was getting busy trying to make something happen on the more northern side of the point for awhile. Sometimes I just shoot pictures because I’m nervous about getting a picture and try to experiment with framing ideas, long lenses, sunstars or whatever to keep busy while waiting for the light. On occasion these pictures come out, but frequently they never see the light of day. One of the nice things about digital vs film happens when a person gets nervous while waiting: nervous shooting of pictures that will never be seen gets expensive with film but only costs time while editing with digital.

I wasn’t really expecting the moon to look this cool and didn’t even know this was happening at first. I got tired of not getting anything on the north side and walked over to see what the snag looked like. I very quickly got busy with my idea to light the snag with my flashlight. The problems to overcome were 1) the flashlight wasn’t really powerful enough, and 2) I wasn’t able to focus the light into a beam. So I shot a ton of pictures hoping to get it mostly right.

My idea mostly worked out but I would rather see it with some slightly stronger light on the snag. I immediately picked up a more powerful and focused light after getting home. Another idea crossed my mind to just invest in one of the small Profoto lights with a magnetic grid with some gels to really be able to do a picture like this in the future.

That said, seeing this of cou