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These beautiful waterfalls are created when gunlock reservoir in southwestern Utah is completely full and starts to overflow over these red sandstone formations. This phenomenon is going on right now because after many years of drought Utah has received a lot of winter moisture this year and the Santa Clara River which runs into this reservoir is running high and will likely continue to run high for quite a while this year.
This used to be a fairly unknown place to visit but it has grown greatly in popularity with the advent of social media. Luckily our State Park department has put some checkpoints in place and personel to keep the number of visitors at a time controlled and to prevent some bad behaviors. However there are always individuals who choose to ignore warnings about how slick these rocks are and how rapid this water is moving and there seems to be a least one death here every year when the falls are running. In my opinion it is even worse now because of so many people thinking they need to capture their crazy exploits over these slick rocks on an action cam to post to social media.

It was difficult to get a photo without any people in it because of the number of visitors and how crazy some of them were. I used luminar Neo's erase capability to erase several people from this photo. It is amazing how well that tool works compared to the various tools in photoshop and lightroom.
I used the virtual ND filter function on the Olympus E-M1x to simulate the slowing of the water in these waterfalls. It is amazing what that function can do on a cloudy dark day like this to get you a handheld pic of slow water that you just couldn't get without a very long exposure and a tripod using traditional ND filters. Not only that the number of people moving around in this frame would have been a big problem for a long exposure.

Tags:   Gunlock Reservoir Gunlock Lake Gunlock Falls landscape scenery waterfall utah utah landscape redrock flood spring 2023 olympus e-m1x 12-45mm

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Another new bird to visit my yard this winter was the Myrtle form of the Yellow-rumped warbler. This form is not often seen in the west where the Audubon's color phase is common. I wonder if this guy was lost.

Tags:   bird bird watching birding yard yard bird animal nature wildlife Utah Nature Utah Bird Utah Wildlife Myrtle Warbler warbler yellow-rumped warbler songbird

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