Mordor

That's how it started. The next morning Grant and I met up at the mouth of Little Rock Canyon in Springville, UT, just north of the Three Sisters, and started headed up the gulch. It's a pretty interesting hike because there haven't been too many people in there over the years, and the trail is pretty much a minimalistic game trail that has the occasional human footprint.

6 AM was looking especially beautiful with some high soaring clouds up over Loafer Mountain and Spanish Fork Peak. Grant slept through his alarm, and as a result was about 20 minutes late, but it was fine because the trail was really sketchy and I kind of wanted a partner and some more light before I started up into the "wilderness." I really enjoyed the area though. I was eating at a little restaurant in Springville called La Casita with my dad last week, and I was looking over at the mountains and realized that I had never been in Little Rock Canyon. In fact, I didn't even know what it was called until this morning when I pulled up a USGS Topographical map online. But from the valley it looks crazy and filled with spines and jagged rocks and stuff, and it reminded me of Mordor from the Lord of the Rings movies. It didn't disappoint once inside. I decided to shoot pretty much everything inside the canyon as an HDR image. Some images have three shots comprising the composite, but most have 5 or 7. Enjoy.

 This one made me feel like Shelob, looking down into Cirith Ungol. Except I was looking down into Springville.

 It's amazing to me the lengths to which living organisms will go in order to exist.

These two images of grant were composited using three exposures.

Grant took these portraits of me and I like them.