We began our first California Desert adventure of the year last week with a stopover in Ivins, UT. My in-laws could not live in a more conveniently strategic spot than this small community on the outskirts of St. George. It’s a four-hour drive from our home to their front door although it takes a little longer when driving through a snowstorm (like we were) and pulling our Scamp travel trailer. I’m learning that I can’t drive the Scamp much over 60 mph on the interstate even though the posted speed is 80 mph. If I drive too fast, everything jostles around, and we have mayhem to clean up from our belongings being strewn all over. The trailer handles better at a slower speed. As we begin traveling more and more, a 4-6-hour drive is the maximum I want to spend on the road. So, our warm bed in Ivins was a welcome relief from the stress of driving in the snow.

When we arrived in Ivins, it was a pleasant 55°f and late in the afternoon. The first item on my photography bucket list for this trip was a visit to Gunlock Reservoir to see the spill over into the Santa Clara River. The reservoir dam was constructed in 1970 to provide irrigation water and flood control. There has been a heavy snowfall this year in the Pine Valley Mountains and much rain in the lower elevations. Because of this, the reservoir has filled to capacity. The spillway over the dam creates a spectacular waterfall into the Santa Clara River below. The reservoir only fills during wet years and the last time the Gunlock waterfall could be seen was 8 years ago, in 2011. I have seen many pictures from this occurrence posted on social media this year and I wanted an opportunity to get my take on the event.

I knew going into this shoot that I wanted to slow my shutter speed enough to create a silky-smooth flow to the water. I accordingly used a 6-stop neutral density filter that allowed me to shoot 1 to 2 second exposures. The sun was setting to the west and I had storm clouds in the area. On images that included sky, I added a 3-stop hard edge neutral density graduated filter as well. For the most part, I wasn’t happy with the images that had sky. I preferred the photos that isolated the water and the falls.

I’ve been working on processing these images over the past week. Although I always like color images, especially in red rock country, I found that these images took on a more dramatic impression when converted to black and white. I had to eliminate clutter from some of the images. These falls had a lot of debris come over the spillway, and the riverbed was quite cluttered. It wasn’t a difficult chore to clone out unwanted branches. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people to shoot around also. Those I couldn’t avoid, had to be cloned out as well. Next week I’ll continue this narrative with our stop at Joshua Tree National Park.