The tour started on Wednesday at midday, as is typical with UTadventure, with a kickoff lunch. We met the group and got the itinerary. The crew had a bit of a switch-up as one of the photographers couldn’t make it at the last minute (which reduced the number to 5), and Kate wasn’t able to get in the country at the last minute, but they were able to replace her with Anoush Anou with whom I’ve shot before. The planned itinerary suffered much rearrangement during the week due to weather issues, and this started with the first day. We were originally scheduled to start at the Little Sahara Sand Dunes, but due to reported high winds, we went the the alternate location of the Bonneville Salt Flats. Ironically, last year we were scheduled to start at Bonneville but due to water conditions we switched to having the first shoot at Little Sahara. I was glad to get a chance to see Bonneville and shoot there.
We got there in the late afternoon, and it was a fairly overcast sky, so it was like having a giant softbox in a studio. The backgrounds were soft pastel colors, and the ground and sky were fairly neutral. The salt flat basically looks like crusty snow, but only goes down a few inches and there is moist mud beneath it. Towards sunset, we got some nice colors as the sun dropped below the clouds on the horizon. We shot around there until the sun went down. One of the photographers had brought some fabrics so that provided some additional interesting looks.
After shooting we returned to the gas station at the turnoff from the highway, which it turns out also has one of the best Indian restaurants around. We got some good food to-go, and headed back towards Salt Lake City for the night.