Earlier this month, there was a pretty heavy snow storm that blanketed the entire Salt Lake Valley. My drive for photography made me contemplate where I could go photograph a sunrise early the following morning. Since I am still getting to know the massive number of mountain trails nearby, I decided to check out the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. I’d been to this temple once in the summer, but thought the freshly fallen snow would be a great opportunity. I wasn’t wrong – but I was pretty darn cold!!
I arrived roughly 20 minutes before the actual sunrise and began photographing various angles. I must point out that my simply gloves were not protecting my hands from the bitter cold – which began to hurt after 20 minutes or so. After capturing a few photos from the temple grounds, I headed to an area north-east of the temple and attached my telephoto lens and snapped a few more. I liked this vantage point because of the majestic mountains towering up from behind the temple. But I don’t love the new homes being build at the temple’s base that to me were an eye-sore on the photo. If I were to go for a photo like this again, I will have to further explore a vantage point that would offer a stronger foreground element (snow-covered trees) that would block out the homes under construction.
I do have a version of the color photo in this blog post done in black and white, which you can check out on my Flickr page.
I look forward to capturing many more photos of this temple with the majestic Oquirrh Mountains in the background, especially since I have a new Canon 70-300mm IS USM lens (I used an old and cheap 200mm on the black and white photo in this post).
~signed, Carltonaut
Carltonaut 
hello,
My name is Alicia and I love your picture of the Oquirrh mountain temple (first photo) my husband and I got married there 2 yrs ago this month. I was wondering if I could purchase a copy of it or possibly purchase the right to print it? We cannot find a picture of this temple in winter until I found your website. It would really mean a lot since I am hoping to give him the picture as a gift. Thank you for your time.
Alicia R
Thanks for your note. Happy anniversary. 🙂 I would be happy to sell you rights to a digital file to print the photo as you described. If you will email jasonmcarlton at hotmail dot com, I will get back to you with pricing and we can go from there. Also, just to confirm, were you wanting the top photo found in the blog post? Just want to make sure. I look forward to hearing from you.