Ghost Panel

“This is an image of the famous ‘Ghost Panel’ in Canyonlands National Park. It’s part of a larger panel and is probably North America’s most magnificent ancient rock art panel. It takes some work and some hiking to get there and the shot was very hard to get so I liked it. I retook this shot over 40 times as we tried to ‘paint’ the cliff with light….back and forth with a large spot light as we tried to get it to look natural. At ISO 3200 and 57 seconds the Milky Way is actually a little ‘over cooked’ in this image but the cliff lighting is perfect. The panel is large and intimidating and I wondered how I would feel as darkness fell but ultimately all I could sense was indifference. Another hard thing about getting this shot is you cannot camp in the canyon…therefore after waiting for total darkness and shooting for several hours, I had the joy of packing up all my gear, lenses and lights and then hiking out in the wee hours. It was worth it though as this shot is hung 20 feet tall in the brand new Utah Museum of Natural History scheduled to open in November 2011 and has had many other awards and accolades including NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day.”