An epic day that included the Grand Canyon and Antelope Canyon ended at another amazing place called Horseshoe Bend. This is one of the most photographed landmarks in the country, but of course I had to get my OWN photo of this iconic bend in the Colorado River at sunset!

It is not difficult to get to. The hike is only 3/4 miles from the parking area. The Colorado River is 1,000 feet below the cliff where numerous tourists gather to enjoy the view. There are no railings or official viewpoints. I found a great rock and sat there for quite a while taking it all in.

Pictures don’t give you a good idea of the scale of this place. It requires a wide-angle lens to fit it all into one picture. I know I say this all the time, but you really do have to go and see this place with your own two eyes to really appreciate it!

While I sat there, I met several interesting people. There was a guy from Slovakia, now residing in California, who was retired and now doing a lot of traveling. He was shooting with a Nikon D810 and 14-24mm lens, which I was jealous of! He talked about a lot of his buddies, and it sounded like he ran with a very active, athletic crowd. He told me about friends who ran races, and went canyoneering. Very nice guy.

There was another guy shooting with a D7100 that I actually let borrow my Tokina 11-16 so that he could get the whole canyon in one photo. He was there with his wife, who kept getting onto him about being too close to the edge! Cute old couple!

On the other side of that couple sat a young woman from New Zealand who had quit her job and was traveling around the world! That’s something I dream of doing, so I was a bit jealous, but also admired her for being so bold. She was traveling alone! I actually ended up running into her again a couple days later at Monument Valley!

Finally there was a young couple from Houston, who were actually staying in Hurricane, UT near Zion National Park, but had made the drive down to check out this place. Neither of them had a camera, but they had lens attachments for their phones. He was asking me about my camera, how much they cost, etc. I enjoyed chatting with them as we watched the sun duck below the horizon. It seems as though you just don’t meet bad people at places like this!

Even though I was bracketing my shots, they all turned out darker than I thought they would be judging by the histogram. Nonetheless, I was able to put together this HDR shot in Lightroom, and it turned out pretty good!