Moonscape Overlook, UT
This is the 100th Story Behind Every Photograph I have written and shared, dating back to their inception in January 2017. I wanted to make this particular story as interesting for the reader, and as rewarding for me personally as possible. Moonscape Overlook and the story surrounding the opening image accomplishes all of those goals.
Utah for me will always have the most interesting and bizarre landscapes. The landscape in Utah changes dramatically in only a few miles and is often referred to as otherworldly. In fact there’s even an area called the Mars Research Station operated by the US government and off-limits to the public. This month’s image was a full 15 years in the making dating back to a 2011 two week trip to the West. I became aware of Moonscape Overlook back before 2010, the name itself should offer some insight into just how unusual this landscape looks. In 2011 I traveled to Idaho and eastern Washington with two close friends, both gifted Large Format photographers. After a weeks time we parted ways and I traveled down to Utah alone with a loose plan to find Moonscape Overlook. For me, back then the internet information was not nearly as available as it is today. Armed with only the general area of Moonscape I stopped at the ranger station in Hanksville with a rented 4WD Ford Explorer. On a sweltering hot early September day the ranger told me to head out a particular backcountry road for approximately 6 miles and turn right for another 2.5 miles. The ranger went onto caution me that there was no cell phone coverage, you should have extra gallons of drinking water, and a few gallons of water should the rental car overheat. He went onto say, if you breakdown and were able to contact someone, chances are it wouldn’t be until the next day I’d get service to tow the vehicle for repairs, likely over $2000.00 for that service call. The male ego doesn’t allow for signs of weakness, but the ranger certainly gave me pause. I did drive out to the area for much of the afternoon, and never really found the access road the ranger spoke about. The 2011 trip West was my last venture to the landscape I have come to love, until a 6 week driving vacation was planned for the summer of 2024.
One of the underlying goals of the 2024 trip would be a morning sunrise at Moonscape Overlook. I did extensive Google Earth research, now in 2024 the internet was much more friendly with directions along with “dos & don’ts” on backcountry access to Moonscape Overlook. I had 5 gallons of water, new tires and a transmission service on my 2012 Pilot SUV with 185,000 miles. I installed super bright headlights as the dates lined up where there would be no moon at all on the planned July 6th visit. VicMom and I got to the Hanksville area mid-day July 5th. Following a gas stop and snacks it was always my plan to drive out to Moonscape in daylight to ease the friction of a moonless pre-dawn drive out and into the unknown. As of July 5th we had been gone from home for over a month, we had seen amazing scenery, enjoyed hanging with each other for all waking hours and essentially crossed off several bucket-list goals for each of us. VicMom was the perfect traveling partner, completely supportive of my photography obsession and many times extolling me to “turn around and go back for that shot you just saw”. Jump ahead to the drive out Factory Butte road, a graded and well maintained backcountry road which travels almost 9 miles into the Utah badlands. I was watching for a road marker about 6.2 mile from Rt 24. My directions suggested I turn right onto a 4WD road for 2.6 miles. This particular road had some deep ruts, big stones jutting out of many parts of the road, travel was bumpy, very slow and a few places where we actually veered off the road itself to avoid huge areas of erosion. By now in 4WD mode about a mile into the road VicMom was growing very weary of the road and fear of getting stuck. I didn’t want to ruin what had been a magical trip with my best friend, couple that with I realized there was no way I could navigate this road in near pitch darkness. So,I turned around and thought the Moonscape photograph simply would not happen…at least this time around. I’m guilty of always thinking “there’ll be a next time”, realistically at my age that is unlikely. Never one to give up, this is where Happy Wife Happy Life carries the day…in this case, the afternoon ! We hung around that backcountry road for the rest of the afternoon where Vic took this photo of me up on some of the badlands overlooking the Utah backcountry.
Upper Blue Hills
We traveled back to a roadside cafe / cowboy type saloon on this Friday night for a bite to eat. As it happened Duke’s SlickRock Grill brings in a singer-songwriter guitar player who looks just like Buffalo Bill Cody for popular Friday & Saturday night crowds. I could write a Blog just about the conversations we struck up and the music we both were fortunate to grow-up with…but for another time. We finished a nice meal, listened to some nostalgic music for a bit and then headed back to the Inn we were staying, about 8 miles on the other side of Factory Butte road. By now I knew exactly the road to turn onto as it is only identified by a road sign “6650 East”. I was up at 4am the next morning and heading back to 6650 E. Once on the backcountry road traveling in pitch darkness would not be nearly as fast. I was all alone as I drove passed the 6.2 mile marker to access Moonscape…so I thought. I went another mile or so closer to Factory Butte in the hopes of making a memorable image of the Butte. I had to turn off the actual road and make my way across a fairly flat valley floor towards the Butte to gain a vantage point. So, I got out of the car to make sure it was a safe entry point from the graded road. With dawn’s early halo on the horizon I could clearly see where the sun would actually rise. The light striking the butte would just be flat and awful, offering no character or reason to make an image. Now out of the car I could see off in the distance several vehicles driving out what I thought was the access road to Moonscape I was on the afternoon before. It’s still quite dark, but I could easily see these vehicles and headlights were flying out that road ! I thought to myself, there’s no way any all-terrain vehicle could travel that fast on the road we were on the day before. Moonscape is now a well known and a popular destination so it was no surprise others were headed out there on a Saturday morning, but at that rate of speed was a mystery. With the butte no longer a photo opp I turned back towards where vehicles were entering a road to Moonscape. The road had a different marker than the road we ventured out the day before. Still in darkness, I was now faced with breaking my promise to Vic about not going back looking for Moonscape, like most times, the lure of “the image” got the best of me. As a side note, a 30″ color image printed on glass now hangs in VicMom’s living room ! Sure enough, the access road I was now on was much smoother for the first 1.3 miles and the remaining 1.4 miles not nearly as smooth, but did not require shifting the car into 4WD. The 2.7 miles took about 15 minutes to cover.
The plateau that overlooks the “blue valley” floor is expansive, there were several tents and half dozen cars already there @ 5:30 am. Now the clock was ticking as I had told Vic I’d be back around 8am for breakfast following the 6am sunrise. If this entire morning weren’t bizarre enough, Moonscape is famous for always being very windy. I very much wanted a film photograph with the Deardorff. At cliff’s edge with a wide angle lens I wasn’t looking forward to strong winds with the big camera and the logistics of having to get to the front of the lens to set the shutter. Check the video at the end to see just how strong the wind was that morning. As with so many adventures I find myself in the middle of, I knew the way this morning was unfolding had the makings of a Story Behind. The following image thru a bug spattered windshield with the ugly and flat light falling on Factory Butte would hopefully validate my decision to venture back out to Moonscape.
Factory Butte
This month’s image is essentially the first color landscape photograph I have shared since the transition to all digital capture. In the interest of putting my photographic life in context, whether it be 40+ years of black and white wet process silver images coupled with the latest venture into the world of a digital camera and the option of color imagery. Before the ’80’s were over I had embraced the Ansel Adams approach of creating imagery with a departure from reality. A focus on the inner emotions the scene in front of me had at that particular moment in time would determine my approach to the final image look and feel. With B&W photography tonal relationships could be “exaggerated” to carry off the emotions that moved me to take the camera out in the first place. There are scores of little nuances that the skilled photographer can draw upon to carry off that departure from reality in the spirit of a personal response. Not at all unlike the different versions of a singular song performed in differing performances. A bit surprising to me is that many of those “film” nuances or characteristics are exact opposites in the world of digital capture. More specific to this month’s image is again rooted in a departure from reality. The image for Moonscape Overlook I had sketched out in my mind leading up to the trip West, and even on the drive out to the Overlook was significantly different that the image I share in this story. Early on in my transition to digital I reasoned that if the sun were a major component of the image then a color rendering was a possibility. Nevertheless, my main goal was a B&W image from Moonscape, expecting a windy and somewhat cool morning I was overcome with the solitude and serenity at the cliff’s edge. So a stark and contrasty B&W image quickly gave way to the warmth and peacefulness that a color rendering was taking shape in my head. I’d be hard pressed to recall a more serene and peaceful experience I’ve had in my photographic life than this morning at Moonscape Overlook. The composition of the image never really changed, only the final rendering was a bit of a surprise, but always a function of the in the moment emotions of the experience.
To my previous point about exaggerating tonalities, I’ve never responded well to the garish colors that many photographers adhere to with digital capture. However, those tonalities in my B&W images many times are extremely exaggerated, but go unnoticed because B&W offers no point of reference, only spatial and tonal relationships for the viewer to process. Admittedly, this month’s image is exaggerated in color intensity, at least in my opinion early on in the world of color for me, not overthetop. In-fact, looking at this image everyday makes me feel exactly as I did that calm and peaceful morning in Utah’s backcountry. At this point in my photographic journey, that satisfaction is as close to a perfect image as possible. Another trip to the West with my two sons and their families is already scheduled for this summer. In researching a second visit to Moonscape I came across a news report that a 19 year old photo enthusiast fell to his death on January 27th 2024 because the cliff’s edge gave-way under him. So, while I reasoned remaining about a foot from the cliff’s edge was safe, once again the naive boy from the East took liberties with the hazards of backcountry travel that were ill-advised, if not exceedingly foolish.
So, what was a 15 year hiatus to photograph Moonscape Overlook, hopes dashed in an afternoon and reborn before the next sunrise is a story worthwhile of the 100th Story Behind Every Photograph ! Springsteen once said about his 50 years Rock & Roll, I got another 50 in me…well, I got another 100 in me !