Benonite Hills, Hartnet Rd

   This is the 3rd Story Behind born from June 24, 2025, the previous two make up the July and August Story Behind Every Photograph posts.

     As I drove away from Moonscape Overlook and checked the time stamp on the phone of the snake it said 7:12am. I would be back at the cabin about 8am. The morning plan was always to do laundry as we were here for two nights and the laundry was free and we’d been away for 9 days. PSA…if ever in Hanksville Utah do stay at the Muddy Creek Mining Co. cabins, they are less than 2 years old and of the highest quality you’ll find in a remote area like Hanksville. Not the least expensive in town, but perfectly located with the amazing husband and wife property managers, Dan and Cher.

   Helping VicMom with the laundry would serve a dual purpose. Obviously to help with the necessary domestics of traveling away from home for weeks at a time makes for a brighter day. Secondly to ease the friction with VicMom to actually drive down a stretch of the Fremont River to access the Benonite Hills in the backcountry of Southeastern Utah. Laundry done, noontime snack while the dryer winds down and soon we are off the the Fremont River Crossing seen from below in this aerial view.

Fremont River Crossing

The Fremont crossing is about 30 minutes from the cabin. Now at the river’s edge I waited 20 minutes or so for the SUV’s brake rotors to cool. The river’s height was at least halfway up the rim so this would avoid the rotors from warping. A Google search indicates staying to the right side of the river is best so we hugged that side and without any issue whatsoever. Now across the river and heading up a backcountry road I had been on 25 years ago. Back then I entered by way of the northern end of Hartnet Rd, a much longer route but didn’t need to access by crossing the Fremont. All alone back in 2011 I tried to find that entry point and was unable to find that same road so the hope was on this trip the Fremont would be favourable to cross. The following video shows the river crossing and also a portion of the uphill climb to where this month’s featured image was made.

   Once on this side of the river I knew there was a bizarre landscape where photographic opportunities would outnumber the time I had in this area. This month’s image is geo-tagged @ 1:40 pm as recorded in the Iphone meta-data seen here. This would be the appropriate point to give VicMom a shout-out for having complete trust in my judgement (wasn’t always the case) in any backcountry exploration I could dream up.

Iphone Meta-Data

    On to the image take-aways and tech challenges. This is an image that did not live up to the potential I had envisioned when I setup the camera in real time. The strong contrast of the deep azure blue sky as a backdrop to the deep reddish purple hills was striking in person. Blues and Reds are not particularly appealing to me so the idea was always a B&W image would be the end result. The camera would never have been setup if there was no white running across the crest of the Benonite Hill separating the dark sky and deep tones of the dark reds. My thought was that thin light area at the crest of the hills would provide the perfect separation between the hills and the dark sky. In B&W deep reds and blues will render almost indentcialy so that white buffer became essential. The foreground rocks satisfied the odd number of interest points that are usually key to successful visual imagery, two rocks and the general landscape making up the key elements of this image. I walked around until the larger amount of white area would be in the center of the two foreground rocks. This slight change of vantage point would provide the best separation of the Benonite Hills and sky and sublimely tie the 3 part composition together, especially in B&W. The stark contrast of the reds and blue sky are carried out in this B&W toned version…but in the end an image that will not make it into my portfolio.

   What has become very obvious in the transition from film to digital capture is there are so many direct opposites between film capture and digital capture. The perception of most film photographers is digital capture is easier because it relies much more on computer processing of the image, and is less artistic. By in large that was my belief prior to the deep dive into digital photography, a discussion for another time, but one that will happen. What stands out in this particular image and is clearly more difficult then film capture with a view camera is controlling the area of sharp focus in the final image. See this graphic of a View Camera and the free movement of the lens plane and film plane to the rear of the camera.

View Camera Movements

With 35mm, a Hasselblad or any other “fixed plane” camera the lens and film / senor remain parallel to one another. No matter how expensive or sophisticated a digital camera the only way to increase depth of focus is adjusting f-Stops downward. Lowering f-Stops goes hand in hand with decreasing shutter speed, or the ability to stop action or movement. Almost never what you want with hand held cameras. The view camera on the other hand has the unique ability to alter the plane of sharp focus by simply adjusting the lens or film plane in a certain direction based on the “shape & depth” of the composition as it relates to the camera’s view. I won’t go into a lengthy explanation of the View Cameras movements and ability to “alter” the plane of sharp focus the process. That part of the view cameras features became very intuitive for me and I rarely failed at carrying off very complicated compositions preserving sharp focus throughout an image.    

     Digital cameras on the other hand rely on something called “Focus Stacking” where the photographer determines the initial focus point into the near part of the composition. Further, based on experience the photographer determines how many progressive images must be captured based on lens choice and how much depth, or near to far has to be preserved in sharp focus. A focus bracket setting in the camera then sequentially takes a series of pictures progressively from near to far. Those pictures are stored in a unique folder, yet another setting the photographer must determine. Once back in front of the computer these files must first be aligned, and then blended in a separate step to discard the out of focus parts of each photo. Ultimately the computer processing software unites the best parts of each photo captured for a single and final rendering. See the practice image and graphic below where there are transparent areas of the tree showing white, those transparent areas coincide with the white areas of the “black” layer seen to the far right above. These areas are also indicated where the “eyeballs” are turned off in the right side above photo. Each photo in the above “stack” indicates the “number of exposures” taken by  camera. Each aligned and blended to produce one final sharply focused image from near to far. So, while the camera and computer carry off a number of steps, the photographer ultimately has to make decisions based on experience that in the end impact the success or failure of any one image. Back to this month’s image, the whole focus stacking is quite new to me, therefore I chose not to get as close to the foreground boulder as I would have preferred to further exaggerate the size of the boulders.

Focus Stack, Benonite Hills

    The Benonite Hills image only required three shots in focus stack mode to gain near to far sharp focus. With respect to achieving sharp focus from very close to infinity is considerably more difficult with the Sony than any view camera. All this tech info and explanation brings me to a greater and more intuitive understanding and the reason for its inclusion in this Story Behind.    

    Next month’s Story Behind Every Photograph will complete the June 24th adventure in a bizzare area called the Mars Research Station and surrounding landscape !