This image goes back to December 2022, on my first real landscape photography trip in the US. It was a road trip to Moab with my buddy Spencer.
Moab is, quite simply, a photographer’s playground. Red rock formations in every direction, massive canyon systems, delicate arches, and light that changes the entire scene depending on the time of day. It’s one of those places where you can drive for hours and keep finding compositions.
One of the most iconic locations there is Mesa Arch.
It’s probably one of the most photographed arches in the US, and for good reason. At sunrise, the first light hits the canyon walls below and reflects upward onto the underside of the arch. For a few minutes, the entire underside of the arch glows a deep, fiery orange. It’s a very specific moment, and it’s what draws everyone there.
Because of that, it gets busy. VERY VERY BUSY. Here's an image taken by Gavin that shows how busy it can get.
Because of that, it gets busy. VERY VERY BUSY. Here's an image taken by Gavin that shows how busy it can get.
We set an alarm for an ungodly hour and made our way out in the dark. On a good day, you’re competing with dozens of photographers for a spot. That morning turned out to be a good one, and we were lucky enough to be the second group to arrive. That gave me a bit of flexibility in choosing my composition, which is not always the case here.
Mesa Arch is also a deceptively difficult scene to photograph.
The dynamic range is extreme. The sky is bright, the canyon below is dark, and the arch itself sits somewhere in between. The arch is also very close to the lens, while the background stretches out to the horizon. That means you can’t get everything sharp in a single frame.
In simple terms, you have to do a fair bit of work to make this image work.
I ended up shooting a multi-frame panorama, combined with focus stacking to keep everything sharp from front to back. I also used aperture bracketing to capture a clean sunstar once the sun crested the horizon. In total, it took around 40 to 50 frames to build the final image.
At roughly 30MB per RAW file, that added up quickly. At the time, I was using a regular Dell laptop, and it simply couldn’t handle stitching and blending that many high-resolution files together. Every attempt would slow to a crawl or fail entirely.
So I waited.
A few months later, I upgraded to a MacBook, and this was one of the first images I went back to process. With the extra power, everything finally came together the way I had intended.
