Inner Light
Upper Antelope Canyon in Arizona is among the most beautiful slot canyons in the southwestern United States. It attracts thousands of visitors on guided tours e...
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Upper Antelope Canyon in Arizona is among the most beautiful slot canyons in the southwestern United States. It attracts thousands of visitors on guided tours each year. I visited there early on a winter morning as part of the first tour group that day. As our group approached the exit of the canyon, the far end of the canyon glowed in golden early morning highlight. The foreground interior of the canyon was still quite dark, so I exposed for the background highlights and underexposed the foreground. Because only hand-held cameras are allowed in the canyon, I used as slow a shutter speed as possible without blurring the image. During processing I pulled the foreground details and colors out of the underexposed shadows.
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Dec, 2022Views
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Awards
Runner Up in Monthly Pro Photo Contest Volume42
Peer Award
Absolute Masterpiece
Top Choice
Superb Composition
Outstanding Creativity
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pixelmac
February 02, 2023
Beautiful shot. In similar situations, I had good results usinghand-held HDRs. Making a burst of 3-5 shots typically results in pictures "close enough" so they can be aligned by the HDR programs
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hamidrezamirmoazi
February 12, 2023
the interest and diffrent view point. thanks for inovative vision....
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stevecarlson_7965
February 14, 2023
WOW! takes a second to realize what you are looking at. Great shot!
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Same photographer See allBehind The Lens
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Behind The Lens
Location
I captured this image in Upper Antelope Canyon, near Page, northeastern Arizona. Upper Antelope Canyon is among the most beautiful slot canyons in the southwestern United States. It attracts thousands of visitors each year.Time
Thousands of visitors come to Upper Antelope Canyon each year. Visitors can enter the canyon only as part of a tour group led by a local guide. Because the canyon is very narrow and fairly short, it can become quite crowded especially during mid-day when the light is the brightest and in summer when mid-day sunbeams pierce the canyon. The crowds can make capturing images without people in them difficult. So I visited on a winter morning just after sunrise; there were only two groups in the entire canyon and keeping people out of photographs was not much of a problem. The downside of doing this was that it was very dark in much of the canyon necessitating relatively slow, hand-held exposures (no tripods are allowed in the canyon). The temperature was also slightly above freezing. Because we had to wear face masks as part of local Covid precautions, my glasses kept fogging up. Each visitor was also given a minute or two at most to photograph in any one location inside the canyon. The post-dawn darkness, cold, and limited time made photographing quite challenging.Lighting
As our group approached the exit to the canyon, spectacular bounce lighting from the rising sun illuminated the exit. I immediately envisioned that the golden lighting could be the centerpiece of a good image. However, the foreground canyon walls between where I was standing and the brightly lit exit were much darker. This created a huge contrast between the foreground walls and the background exit. So I exposed for the brightly lit exit and left the foreground in deep shadow in my exposures. The contrast was so extreme that I could barely see foreground detail on the camera’s display screen as I took exposures. However, from previous experience with high contrast scenes, I trusted that I could bring the foreground details and colors back out of shadow during processing.Equipment
This was taken with a Canon R5 and a Canon 24-105 lens set at 24 mm. This was hand-held because tripods are not allowed in the canyon. Since this camera was still fairly new to me, I practiced taking relatively slow, hand-held exposures in another slot canyon beforehand.Inspiration
Upper Antelope Canyon is a spectacular landscape. It features smooth, undulating surfaces with warm tans and browns in a soaring, narrow canyon. One could spend many days there finding different angles and compositions at different times of day and seasons.Editing
The key part of post-processing was bringing the under-exposed foreground out of deep shadow. I not only had to dodge much of the foreground, I also had to adjust the foreground white balance and colors back to the warm tans and browns of the inner canyon.In my camera bag
The Canon R5 and Canon 24-105 lens are the mainstays of my camera equipment for landscape photography. I also use a Canon 100-500 mm lens for landscapes and wildlife. I shoot about 98% of my images with this one body and two lenses. In addition, I infrequently use my older Pentax K-1 body for Milky Way shots since it has a built-in star tracker. I have kept a Samyang 14 mm lens and Pentax 28-105 lens for K-1 Milky Way photography.Feedback
Upper Antelope Canyon is an awesome place to photograph. However, it is also quite challenging. You must tour the canyon with a local tour company (making reservations in advance is recommended). The tour guides are very good; they know all the best locations to capture images in the canyon, including when and where sunbeams appear during the summer. However, you get little time to compose and expose shots as the tour groups must keep moving through the canyon to avoid human logjams. Therefore you must know your camera very well and how to quickly change camera settings for contrasting lighting conditions. You cannot use a tripod; tripod use has apparently contributed to human log jams in the past. So especially if your camera is not good with avoiding noise at higher ISO, you should know how to take relatively long exposures hand-held (I shot as slow as 1/6 second hand-held). From mid-morning to mid-afternoon on many days you often have to work to keep people out of your images, especially when shooting more horizontally as opposed to vertically straight up. The guides rightfully require you to stay with your group, but I suggest tagging along at the back end of the group to make it easier to keep people out of images. The first time I toured Antelope Canyon was a bit nerve-wracking, since I had to envision, compose, change camera settings, and take images almost literally on the fly. The second and third times I went through the canyon were more enjoyable because I knew what the routine was in the canyon. I got a very good image on my first time through, but I captured this better image on my third time there.
