Utah Photo Adventure, Part 1 - Factory Butte

 (NOTE: This is the first in a series of posts about a photography trip I took in early November, 2022.)

In my many trips through Utah as photography coach for Road Scholar tours, there was an area that we always passed through -- never stopping for photos -- as we traveled from Capitol Reef National Park to Moab for Arches and Canyonlands.  It was the area around a little town called Hanksville.

From the bus as we whizzed by, I could see really interesting geological features that looked a lot like the features at the Black Place in northwest New Mexico, but bigger and more numerous.  Here are some of my fleeting views through the bus windows in September of 2017:

And there was one big feature off in the distance that really caught my attention:  Factory Butte.

I've always wanted to go back and spend more time on the ground exploring and photographing Factory Butte and the surrounding area, but never had the right opportunity until recently (November 2022), when my friend, Alan, and I planned a 7-day trip to Hanksville.

I'll do a separate post about Hanksville itself, but for context, here's where it's located.

Southeast quadrant of Utah.  The "Four Corners" area (Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Airzona) is where the dotted lines intersect in the lower right corner of this map.

Hanksville is about 430 miles from my home in Corrales, NM, which is roughly the distance between Boston and Washington, DC.  So it takes all day to get there.

Our route took us into the remote canyonlands of southeast Utah, crossing the Colorado River in the northern neck of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

Factory Butte is located about 12 miles northwest of Hanksville, and easily accessible by car.  It's a stand-alone feature rising about 1,000 feet above the surrounding terrain and perhaps half a mile long.  Its caprock is sandstone with shoulders and foothills of Mancos shale (essentially dried mud) that form fascinating ridges and hills.

Because we had planned for five days in the area, we were able to photograph Factory Butte at many times of day and in widely varying weather conditions.

Pre-sunrise ("Blue Hour"):

Sunrise ("Golden Hour"):

In low-hanging morning clouds:

. . . in mid-afternoon:

. . . and at sunset:

And sometimes, when the light wasn't great, it was right for a black-and-white treatment:

On the last day of our stay in Hanksville, we set out at dawn to get closer to the Mancos shale foothills at the base of the Butte using a rented off-road vehicle.

Up close, the shapes and textures of the foothills were visually interesting, of course:

Even more interesting were sandstone boulders that had broken off the caprock on top and tumbled all the way down to the plains at the base of the Butte.

To give you a sense of the scale, here are three images of the same rocks:

This rock . . .

. . . is the rock in the foreground of this image . . .

. . . and the rocks above are the ones circled in this image (which I know you can hardly see):

The Mancos shale foothills were endlessly fascinating to me, and I had brought my drone to get aerial views of them.  I will include the drone images in a separate post (to come), but here's a sample to whet your appetite:

If you would like to see these images (and more) in a larger format, please visit my photography website, Todos Juntos Photography, by clicking here.

Enjoy!