Where do you go to get a classic image in Arches National Park if you’ve only got 30 minutes to an hour? We’ll show you the places to go, one or two, and how to shoot there, when you should go, what time of day, where to stay and how to get into the park. So, let’s get started. Where to go if you only have 30 minutes to an hour to get a classic image of Arches National Park.
So, when we photograph at Arches, we definitely stay in Moab. Arches is very close to Moab. You just take the 191 north. So we try to stay on the north side of town. And take the 191 north and you’ll see a big sign. There’s a stoplight there now because so many people come and go from the park. And you’ll turn right into the park, and you’re there. Entrance gate is right there. There’s a sign if you want to get your picture taken right at the front gate like all parks. But then we just climb up this little mountain range. We’re going up right now. And we get ourselves up on the flat up on top here. And that’s where all the arches are at.
We’re driving over to an area that has several arches in it. It’s got Turret Arch. It’s got Sunrise Arch and Double Arch there. It’s a really great first place to go to get a morning shot. The Instagrammers will be out there by the droves standing in Sunrise Arch, watching the sun come up.But it’s going to take you about 35 to 40 minutes from Moab to get to this spot. Then you’re going to have to walk in. It’s not a long walk. You park right at the arches. So it’s less than a half a mile to get over to the arch. We’re going to scramble through Sunrise Arch in the morning and we’re going to shoot back towards Turret Arch and try to get Turret Arch framed by Sunrise Arch in the foreground. It’s a great first place to shoot. So, that’s where we’re headed. We’ll just check it out and get ready to go shoot in the morning.
So, as you come into Arches National Park, you just stay on the main road. There’ll be a lot of different turnoffs, but there’s not a road turnoff until Windows. You’ll make a right-hand turn on the road, turn off at Windows, and that’s going to take us over to a little parking area that sits nestled right in three arches there. There’s Turret Arch, Sunrise Arch and Double Arch. And it’s a great place to do sunrise because you can shoot through Sunrise Arch and looking at Turret Arch, which is what we’re going to do in the morning, or you can just do a nice image of Turret Arch. It can look really pretty in the morning there. But that’s the, kind of the classic spot in Arches. Arches is so big and so diverse. There isn’t that kind of iconic image like you get in Zion. But there’s a lot, well anything with an arch. Delicate Arch is the classic. There’s a secondary shot we’ll show you that shows how to get a quick shot of Delicate Arch that doesn’t require the three or four mile hike. It just gives you a quick, with a long lens shot of Delicate Arch. So you can have that as a, you know, our second choice here in the park. So we’re almost over to Windows.
So this morning we came out to the Windows area. I love this area because there are three arches, sets of arches in this area. So there’s lots to photograph here. If you only have one place to come, you want to get a great image of arches, this is where you would come if you want to just get a great image of an arch. We came this morning. We scrambled through North Window. It’s a large window. There’ll be a lot of people there as the sun comes up because they all come and sit in the North Window to watch the sun come up. But I went, I scrambled through North Window and then just to as you go through to the left, scrambled up on the rocks into a spot where I can look through North Window at Turret Arch in the background. This time of year, summertime, unfortunately Turret Arch is kind of shadowed or shaded by North and South Window Arch here in the front. In the spring and fall that sun moves around and it comes in on Turret Arch and so you have the North Window which becomes just kind of a dark frame that kind of glows a little bit with the the sun coming up and it’s very pretty. I got a nice enough shot. There’s some deep shadows on Turret Arch. If you wait for about an hour, 30 minutes to an hour, all the people who came to get their picture at sunrise are gone. And now there’s just a few people coming and going. And the Turret Arch is lit pretty much year round in the background. So you can get those two shot together and that makes a nice image. Just a fun image. The arch inside the arch is just a beautiful iconic shot.
So that’s where we were this morning, Windows. I would now just hang in this area. What I usually do after I’m done is I scramble off from that little ledge and just walk out and look back at the two windows. And now the sun’s lighting them. And they’re very pretty from that angle. You know, rather the lights on right or left. Today, it’s almost dead in. In the spring and fall, it’s going to be right and left, and it’s going to give us nicer light on that front face of North and South Window. The North and South Window face east. So, in the morning, if that sun is coming up in the spring and fall, it kind of cuts across them. North and South window gives you some nice, just some nice drawing on the arches there on the rock.
So, right behind me is South Window. North Window is just right around the corner, the one we scrambled through. So these two, there’s just a lot to photograph here. If I only had 30 minutes with my family, I would roll up into this parking lot. I would come out here. I’d get my family, walk up into North Window, take a picture, scramble around the other side, take my shot of the arch through the arch, and then I’d head out, take a shot of Turret Arch, and get in my car and head to Delicate Arch. That’s what I would do.
Settings wise, I’m shooting 16 millimeter. I’m shooting with a lot of depth of field. I shot at f/16 this morning because I wanted the North Window in focus and I wanted Turret Arch in focus in the background. So I pretty much wanted everything in focus. I wasn’t concerned about things falling out of focus. I wanted deep focus. And then I was focusing on North Arch and I was then, I would switch and I’d focus some on Turret Arch. That just made it easy for me to go fast back and forth. Both of those shots feel like they’re pretty much both in focus from front to back. That just kind of was how I was setting those up front to back. So let’s take a look at some of the images here. Here’s some of the images from North and South Window from, I’m on the east side looking back looking west. Here’s Turret Arch just right after the sun has come up.
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So, we left Windows, got back on the main road, and are heading deeper into the park until we come to a right-hand turn called Delicate Arch. There’s really three different places to photograph Delicate Arch from. The first one is you walk up to Delicate Arch. It’s about a three mile round trip. So if you have the time, it is worth doing at sunset. It really is a beautiful place to photograph at sunset. You see the La Sal mountains in the background. Sometimes you get clouds. You get the moon sometimes in the arch or off to the side of the arch depending on the time of year and where the moon’s at. So it’s just a beautiful place to shoot. If you have the time to do that, I would do it, but it’s a bit of a commitment. If you don’t have a lot of time, and that’s kind of the goal of our whole series here is if you only have 30 minutes to an hour, you can get this shot of Delicate Arch right out of the parking lot almost. It’s like a 100 yards to an overlook. If you’ve got a long lens, you can get a nice shot of Delicate Arch from the end of the parking lot. You walk up about 100 yards. And that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk up that 100 yards. We’re going to shoot with a 300 millimeter lens on an APS-C sensor, so it’s like a 450mm and that’ll get us pretty close to that delicate arch. It’ll give us an image. And we’re doing it here late in the day, so the light’s going to be nice on the arch. It’s definitely a sunset place. You can do sunrise, but the sun is coming up behind the arch. It’s not ideal. Most people, most of the images you’ve seen are shot at sunset at Delicate Arch.
All right, so let’s get to the end of the parking lot. When you come into this parking lot, just keep going to the far end of Delicate Arch parking lot. The first little parking area you get out, you go up to the arch. The far end you get out and at the far end you can walk up the hundred yards up to the viewpoint to see Delicate Arch. So, here’s where the road ends. The road ends right here and there’s just a short walk up to go to the viewpoint to be able to see Delicate Arch. So, I’m just going to park right here. We’re going to hoof it up there. It comes up real quick. It’s kind of cool. You see it off in the distance. I’m going to take a tripod in case I want to shoot a long exposure here. That’s going to make this a little easier.
So, we’re not at the end of the first viewpoint here. The view, the first end of the first viewpoint is right around this corner here. But that ridge starts to climb up into the arch just a little bit. The half mile walk gets you up on that ridge looking at Delicate Arch, which is much nicer. It gives you a better view of the arch. And then if you go past the trail, just get out on that upper ridge, not the one here, but the next one over, you see really well into Delicate Arch. At that point though, you committed enough time, enough hiking that you just as well go up and see it. Although, look at what I’m shooting here. Look at all the people on that thing up there. It’s crazy. They are like already waiting for sunset. There’s already a million people up there. All right, let’s walk down to the end. And let’s just see what we get from the very end of this viewpoint.
So this is the half mile walk from the last parking lot and I see the Delicate Arch, it’s beautiful right now. There’s clouds behind it. It’s a beautiful shot. I’m using that 300 millimeters. So I’m really reaching out. I’m going between 300mm and 100mm just to frame it a little differently so I see more of the clouds above it. But it’s a pretty easy jaunt up here. It didn’t take very long to get up here and you get a great shot and back to your car and home. Whereas if you do the long hike, it’s going to take you at least two hours, two and a half to three hours, depending on how fast you go. But this is a great spot here.
So I’m shooting at 1/50th of a second at f/8. That gives me plenty of depth of field. I’m at 100 ISO, so that’s why I’m on the tripod still. I’m on 100 ISO. I’m using my timer. So, as I run my timer, it’ll take the picture and I won’t be jiggling the camera at 1/50th of a second. With the lens stabilization on this lens and camera it wouldn’t be any problem at all. But I’ve got a great image. I think it’s almost done. Actually, I’m going to try to get back to Balance Rock and just see if we can’t get some sunset shots at Balance Rock on our way out of the park. So, that’s a quick run up here, half mile back to Delicate Arch. There’s a great sunset shot you can get in 30 minutes to an hour.
Just a couple things about Arches National Park to remember. One is in the winter time sometimes the roads get a little icy and they will lock the gate and not allow people to come in till the roads, till the sun comes out and the roads warm up. So if you’re trying to get in there at first light, we’ve been stuck sitting at the gate before, not able to come in. One of the problems with photographing national parks in the summertime is that the days are so long. The sun’s going to come up at around 6:00. It’s going to go down between 8:45 and 9:00. So it’s just a long day. We’re trying to do sunrise and sunset. It makes it very, very difficult. So, a lot of these tips are just, here’s a great place you can go to just grab an image even though you don’t have the ability to get out here at first light or till the sun goes down. But just go to this spot, get a shot. You can stay with your family, stay with your group, your friends, whoever you’re with, and just, you can keep going and it doesn’t have to become just a photo trip. That’s the idea. A great place to get a quick shot to add to your iconic images of the national parks.
The other thing about Arches is in the dead summer when it’s really hot here and it’s really hot, you don’t have to get a time stamp to come into the park. But if you’re going to come in the spring and fall when it’s really the busy season, then you’re going to have to schedule. You have to get on the website and you’re going to have to get a time to go into the park and you have to reserve a time. They only give out so many each day. So, it’s just important to make sure you plan ahead to make sure you get that time if you’re coming especially like June, early June, May, June, April, May, June into, well, by July, they usually have opened the park up and because it gets so hot here and it stays hot till the end of August. And then they’ll start it again in the fall. Just make sure you check what time of the year you’re coming and you need a time slot to come in. Because that can make a big difference. You may show up in the morning wanting to come in and they won’t let you in. Although I’m guessing if you come at sunrise, you can come in all you want because the gate is open and no one’s there. Rangers don’t show up till usually about 8:00. I think 7:30 in Arches. Actually, at 7:30 in Arches. The gift store stays open till 6:00. And I did find a mini building block of Delicate Arch there, which I bought, which is pretty interesting.
So anyway, there’s some thoughts about Arches. So let’s wrap this up. We’ve been in Arches. It’s a wonderful place to shoot. My favorite shot in Arches is definitely Delicate Arch. There’s no doubt about that. So, if you’re going to get that as a quick, you know, just a quick stop, you’re gonna want to go all the way in to the end of the road at Delicate Arch Road and walk up about 100 ft and you can look back at the arch and get a shot with a long lens there. If you can take the time to walk the half mile to get up to the top and to shoot it from up on top, it’s even a nicer shot. That’s the quick shot for Delicate Arch. Or you can hike in. It’s definitely an evening shot. That’s when you want to go there. We come in the morning usually to windows area because in the windows area you’ve got Turret Arch, you’ve got North and South Window. You’ve got Double Arch. There’s just a lot to photograph here. Crawl through North Window up on the ledge. You can get a shot of Turret Arch back through the North Window which is always a beautiful shot. If you shoot it early, which I did some early and I just, I’m going to bring the color up a little bit in those. You get a really nice shot even though the sun’s not on it. The minute that sun comes up in the summertime, it’s going to throw a shadow on Turret Arch and not going to look that great. Then you’re going to have to wait for about an hour to where you can get a shot of Turret Arch after the sun’s come up a little bit through that North Window. But scramble around, go out to the front. You can look in back to the front. A lot of different places here.
So, there’s a look at Arches. A great place to photograph. And if you only have 30 minutes to an hour, those are the two spots. I’d go to one or both of those while you’re here in Arches.
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