Archangel Falls, or Archy for short, are the cascading falls along the Subway hike section of the Virgin River. Willie, Yan and I woke up early on our 2nd day in Zion and thought we were getting an early start to the hike. When we arrived at the parking lot we found that a large number of other cars had already beaten us here We decided to see if we could pass them all and practically ran the first 4 miles of the 5 mile Subway hike. We got to Archangel Falls thinking that we really were the first group to arrive. Nope. A man and woman had beaten us there.
Willie and I setup closer to the falls so that we could use the largest section of the waterfall as our foreground element. We both use the same Feisol tripod and had ordered the short column for our tripods so we could get lower to the ground. Unfortunately my regular tripod column was screwed so tight onto my tripod that I was never able to get the short column on. If I had been able to get lower you would see more autumn color and a larger portion of the beautiful red rock canyon walls.
I really liked how the water was splashing off the rock on the middle left of this photo, creating an almost fountain like section of spray. I placed the red rock in the lower center to help draw the eye through.
Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S:
24mm, f/18, 1 sec, ISO 50
BW Circular Polarizer
