{"id":31694,"date":"2025-12-21T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T08:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=31694"},"modified":"2025-12-15T10:31:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T18:31:10","slug":"phavorite-photos-utah-highway-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/12\/21\/phavorite-photos-utah-highway-12\/","title":{"rendered":"Phavorite Photos: Utah Highway 12"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

When good buddy Baja John and yours truly ran the mother of all publicity stunts (the CSC Motorcycles Western America Adventure Ride) through the western United States, I had the easy part.\u00a0 I simply rode at the head of the formation of our dozen or so Chinese, Colombian, and US riders.\u00a0 Baja John did all the heavy lifting: Selecting our routes, mapping out the course, and handling all the hotel reservations.\u00a0 John did a hell of a job, finding roads that were scenic, twisty, and representative of the best riding America has to offer.\u00a0 Of all the roads we rode, one in particular stands out:\u00a0 Utah’s Highway 12.<\/p>\n

Utah Highway 12 runs from just east of Bryce Canyon National Park to Capitol Reef National Park, and it something out of a psychedelic mapmaker’s mind with the vibrance turned up.\u00a0 Way up.\u00a0 \u00a0The road winds its way through by bright pink and white sandstone cliffs, with its black tarmac and yellow lines piercing a path through a dramatic landscape.\u00a0 It is fine motorcycling; the stuff of dreams and brilliant memories.\u00a0 If you’ve never ridden Utah, trust me on this: You need to.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed that stretch of Utah so much that a year or two later Susie and I repeated the trip, and it was along Utah Highway 12 that I stopped and grabbed the photo you see above.\u00a0 Sometimes these photos are a little tricky to capture while standing in the road, focusing on composition, angling the polarizer for the best saturation and reflection elimination, holding the camera steady, and grabbing the best possible photograph, all the while listening intently for any traffic barreling up the road behind me.\u00a0 The trick is to not get run over while seeking the perfect picture.\u00a0 So far, I’ve been lucky.<\/p>\n

I used my Old Faithful combo (my Nikon D810 camera and 24-120 lens) for the above photo.\u00a0 I used to think prime lenses (i.e., lenses of the non-zoom variety) provided the sharpest images, but the Nikon 24-120 lens changed my mind.\u00a0 It’s as sharp a lens as any of the several I’ve used.\u00a0 I did not use a tripod.\u00a0 The Nikon 24-120 has a built-in vibration reduction feature, so on a bright and sunny day there’s really no need for a tripod.\u00a0 Hand-held is good enough.<\/p>\n

There’s a bit more to the story, and that’s another story.\u00a0 I pitched this stretch of road as a “Destinations” piece for Motorcycle Classics magazine, and they bought it.\u00a0 You can read that article here<\/a>, and you can read a few of my other destinations pieces here<\/a>.\u00a0 If you are not a Motorcycle Classics subscriber, you should be.\u00a0 It’s one of the few remaining motorcycle print publications, and it has always been one of the best.\u00a0 And if you want to read more about our trek across the western US, get yourself a copy of 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Earlier Phavorite Photos?\u00a0 You bet!\u00a0 Click on each to get their story.<\/p>\n

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