I left Moab yesterday and drove the 3 hours up to Salt Lake City. What a boring drive! It's all I could do to stay awake.

 But in the early a.m. I drove out to

which you get to by driving on the northern access road just out of Moab to Canyonlands Park. This essentially is a peninsula above the desert valley. It is an extraordinary place and, from this vantage point, essentially like standing on the bow of a ship.

It felt like aerial photography with the advantage of not going 100 mph, giving you all the time you wanted to study and look. I loved being able to roam around this whole expanse with a long lens and pick and choose my pictures.

As I was photographing, looking through the lens, I found myself thinking of macro versus micro economics, minimal versus maximal, a world view versus a hyper-close view.

This was oddly powerful. I don't know that I have ever been accused of having a God complex but if ever that were to surface now would be the time, as though, click the shutter, there I've made another butte, click, another canyon, click, another wash, click, another spire.

Last, another thought along a different line, at what point would the image break down in terms of intelligibility? As I pushed the medium and the limit of my lens, as I reached now across miles of information, content compressed through great distance, the image would just lose its comprehensibility and break down into abstract lights and darks.

I know, "Neal, what were you smoking?" Right? I swear, I was substance free. But you'd have to be clueless to not have deeper thoughts in a place like this. Our world can feel very large here, and us, very small.

To wrap up my time in Moab I leave you with this:

with the shadow of me and the rental Jeep in the picture. I hate goodbyes, always hard when you leave what you love, but Moab continues to be a place close to my heart, something about its scale, its color, its shapes and forms, its accessibility, draws me in. Goodbye Moab, I hope to see  you again soon.

This was my last day in Moab and I used it to drive  40 miles south to the lower entrance to Canyonlands National  Park, then another 40 miles west  into the park itself. A lot of driving but some of it was very beautiful

This is also where the petroglyphs are at Newspaper Rock on the way into the Park

160 miles of driving for just a few photographs but we cannot live by photographs alone and I enjoyed the day, nevertheless.

Back in Moab I downloaded the files as usual

on to an early 2013 13 inch MacBook Pro that is everything when I travel, never having let me down and a real workhorse. It is how I write blogs while on the road, place new works on the site, teach from, edit my work in Lightroom and send files for publication, plus do all the things we need a computer for these days, including streaming.

One thing I don't do often while away is prepare files for printing, saving that for the studio when I return home and can work on a 33 inch Sharp display. 13 inches is small for deciding how a file will print, at say 17 x 22 inches. As it is really past time to replace the MacBook I have been thinking of replacing it with a 15 inch one, the idea being that it would be large enough to prepare files for printing while on trips, and therefore cut out or reduce one very large step in the workflow. I do love how small the current MacBook is, but perhaps the bigger laptop would be a better solution. Any of you out there use a 15 inch? Your thoughts on this much appreciated. Neal's email: here

After another trip at dawn to photograph the upper Canyonlands Park I will head up to Salt Lake for a couple of days. I plan to continue daily posts until Tuesday the 13th, when I fly back home.

From downtown in Moab on the way to Arches, turn right just before the bridge and head north on Rt 128. This heads you up a canyon close to the Colorado River and eventually, a couple of hours later, to Interstate 70. From there drive west and meet up with the main drag back to Moab at RT 191. Total time: maybe six hours, more if you stop often.  What a trip.

Of course, the dilemma is what do you do if you are an artist that uses a camera? Succumb to the beauty and the temptation to photograph this glorious scenery? Part of the trap is to "acquire" pictures as proof that you were there or perhaps to share with those back home. I am as guilty of this as anyone else, yet it isn't quite what I do, is it? But it all is incredibly seductive, and this trip up the canyon is among the most seductive I have ever seen.

Will I use these? Will they end up as framed prints in a show somewhere? Not likely, for they don't do anything or say much besides where I was and it was very beautiful there. Of course, you might think that is enough. To chronicle the place, to document something so exquisite as lit up Aspen trees in autumn, all gold and shimmering in late afternoon sunlight.

Of course, if you practice photography to a larger stage than just yourself, your family and friends, this then does become a dilemma. What are you known for? And what contribution do pictures like this make to your overall body of work? Real artists don't make pictures like this, or perhaps it is safer to say, a certain kind of artist makes pictures like these. 

I used to deal with this problem when teaching in Italy in Venice. I would tell students in the first class that they had the next couple of days to make all the pretty touristy pictures they wanted but after that I didn't want to see them. Once done, then I would assign them to work in very specific ways, to search to tell a story, to make pictures as an investigation into something that caught their interest, to begin to make pictures that were specific and intentional instead of ubiquitous and generic.

Last, what if you feel you can make pictures like these from the drive up the canyon that are better than anyone else's? What if you know you can make a contribution to this way of seeing that is unique, has your own perception as a creative individual  and is motivated by your passion, commitment and hard work as well as the considerable cost of the gear you use to make pictures that are truly magnificent? Then by all means have at it but know the world is a competitive place and count me among the skeptics.

Programming note: Bringing you this blog every day is a lot of work. I get up early to work on it for a couple of hours before heading out to shoot. I am happy to do it as I know I would love to travel vicariously with someone who was making pictures daily in Moab. But, let me know you're along  for the ride, if you can. There are lots of ways to share your thoughts with me. Put a comment  on my Facebook page or on Instagram. Or shoot me an email: here.

And thanks for coming along.

Dilemma: passenger or pilot? Make a photograph or take a photograph? Go along for the ride or drive? Okay, you get the distinction. Allow me to explain.

First, logistics and a few thoughts. After photographing the Factory Butte area on Day 3 I stayed in Hanksville and got up at dawn yesterday morning to be back to see it as the sun rose,

which had a theatrical quality to it, as though a Wagner opera was playing. This was so good the actual making of the photographs seemed perfunctory.

After heading back to the motel and loading up I was off, heading back to Moab, about 3-4 hours away. Take note here if you choose this trip: fill up in Hanskville. There is no gas or anything for well over 100 miles of endless desert. The southern route back to Moab takes you through Hite and the northern tip of Lake Powell which is in the Glen Canyon region.This is simply breathtaking country, big and unfathomable on a scale difficult to understand. I found myself thinking of when this was all formed, how huge forces acted to make this landscape, how erosion, wind and water sculpted it and, today, how years of drought and over utilization of the Colorado River's water makes for a lake lower than it was even eight years ago. 

This a bank of rock I have been photographing for years:

First 2010:

It seems a picture can speak a thousand words.

Did you know that by the time the Colorado River winds its way through the American West and exits in Mexico, it isn't? There is no water left for we have used it all, for irrigation, but also for human consumption as well.

Well, I have more to write but will save it for perhaps this post as part two, we will see. I still have to address the "Dilemma" part.

Yesterday was remarkable. I left Moab early and drove about an hour to Thompson Springs to revisit a town I'd photographed in 2010. Little had changed. The series is here.

From there I drove east on 70 to Green River which I will write about later then on to Hanksville, and then west to Factory Butte, where I spent the rest of the day.