First off, Delicate Arch is huge. It is much larger than I thought it would be, towering over tourists as they stand underneath its “legs”. As I got to the spot, I was frustrated by the hordes of people swarming the place. I knew I wasn’t going to get much opportunity for good light due to the clouds in the west so I had to quickly decide on a location. I didn’t want to take the typical Delicate-Arch-with-La-Sal-Mountains-in-the-distance shot so I worked my way to the left side of the arch. It was spring time so there was some green down in the valley below and I liked how the blue sky, red rock, and green vegetation complimented one another so I decided to setup on the left, higher up the bowl surrounding the arch in order to get more of the valley in the frame.

Probably the most difficult aspect of this shot was getting some good light to correspond to when a tourist wasn’t at the base of the arch taking a frustratingly long time to take their corny holding-up-the-arch shot. After having several spoiled shots due to inconsiderate tourists (standing around for 15 minutes at a time, causing a backlog of other tourists waiting for their turn to hold everyone else up), I finally was able to get this shot.

24mm, 1/13 second, f/13, ISO 100, polarizing filter