White Pocket, Arizona

A rock formation in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona

The colorful sandstone rock formations in the Escalante – Grand Staircase National Monument and Vermilion Cliffs National Monument are about as interesting as a terrestrial landscape can get, with white, yellow, orange and red sandstone mixed in a variety of patterns and textures.  White Pocket is one of the many photogenic sites in these monuments.

For the image above, I saw the clouds moving so I knew a long exposures would be best. Fortunately it was pretty deep into twilight, so I was able to use a circular polarizer as a 2-stop ND filter to lengthen exposure, cut glare from sand crystals in the rock to get the full color (make the clouds pop a bit), and combine 8, 15 and 30-second exposures in Photomatix HDR software to fully extract rock texture (while blending in in the longest exposure to preserve the cloud movement and not have too much of an “HDR-look”).

The f-stop ended up being f/8 and I had to raise the ISO to 640 by this point, but at 14mm there was more than enough depth of field, and the noise wasn’t bad after I knocked it down a bit more on the underexposed and 0EV images.

Lone tree on white sandstone

So you think you might want to visit White Pocket? The video below (6X speed time-lapse) of a small portion of the 15 miles of sand was taken shortly after a rain, when the underlying sand was still wet, heavy and firm, not as deep or loose as it would be in dry weather, and we still spent hours helping a couple of stuck vehicles.

Do you have a true 4×4 vehicle (not AWD) with high clearance, off road tires rated All Terrain, and experience driving in deep sand?

Do you have an air compressor that will reinflate four large tires? One of mine failed on this trip, and another I bought started smoking after the first 1/2 tire! I now carry multiple redundant air compressors.

White Pocket iPhone panorama

The one-lane roadbed itself isn’t the only consideration, since you will come across multiple vehicles driving in and out. One of the opposing vehicles will often have to veer up and out of the roadbed onto the surrounding deep sand. Uphill traffic generally had the right of way, but common sense should prevail! If there are three vehicles coming down and one going up, it probably makes sense for one vehicle to risk venturing into the surrounding sand than to make three do it. And if someone was crazy enough to tow an off-road trailer in (like the one in this video, stuck), give them a break and let them keep their momentum in the roadbed. The range of prices I’ve heard for extraction from the sand is $600-1000!

Golden light on swirls of sandstone

There are services that can take you out there on “photography tours”, but you might want to qualify the photography of the person who’s driving you out there for that.  When I took the blue hour photo at the top of this blog post, an entire group of about 12 photographers were already back at their camp, eating dinner. We met one couple from that group the next morning, wandering around on the rock asking, “What are you supposed to shoot out here?”

I’m looking into permits so I can bring photographers in, who won’t have to ask that question, or miss the best light.

Evening light in Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, Arizona

For the photo above, I was intrigued by the texture, patterns and light in the lower right, but it wasn’t strong enough to be the main subject. It was a little tight at 16mm to include the sky and more obvious hoodoo as primary subject, but it worked. Just barely, after a few camera positions and compositions. The following day I made sure that my 14mm was in the pack that I took out on the rock.