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Horseshoe Bend

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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!

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In The Slot

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I arrived an hour early to my Antelope Canyon photo tour as a result of the confusing time zones in this area! Arizona and Utah are in different time zones, and cell phones and GPS units have a difficult time getting it right if you’re near the border!

I wasn’t the only one to make this mistake, so at least I had another photographer, John, to chat with while waiting. He was from Washington state, and made the drive out to Page from Las Vegas, where his wife was attending a conference. Really nice guy!

I was a bit concerned about some pop-up thunderstorms that could be seen in the surrounding areas, but luckily that was never an issue, as the sun continued to shine over Page for the entire duration of the tour.

It’s not a very long drive from Page out to the canyon. Our guide wasn’t wasting any time, as he went flying down the dirt and sand to the entrance to the canyon. A bit of a bumpy ride, but we got there quickly!

He informed us that we’d be starting the tour by chasing the light beams throughout the canyon, and that it would be very fast, then we’d slow down and go back through the canyon. He told us to have our cameras ready to go, and not to really worry too much about settings, just get the shot!

This was the first shot we got upon entering the canyon:

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Despite how it may look, this canyon was PACKED with tour groups! Our photography tour group was small, 6 people plus our guide. Some of the general tours had 20 or so people in them. And there are several different tour groups in the area. There had to have been a couple hundred people total in that canyon. Luckily our guide was very good at being just plain bossy and telling people in the other tours to move, or wait for us to get the shot!

We made several stops through the canyon to get shots of numerous light beams. Some of them we watched dissolve as we shot them. Timing is everything, and I was thankful our guide knew exactly when to be where in order to get these shots!

Once we had made it through the canyon in that fast & furious rush to get these light beam shots, we slowed down and chased the different lighting in the various “rooms” of the canyon as the sun moved along in the sky above.

I think that’s about all that needs to be said, so enough talking, here are a ton of shots I took on the tour!

If you have a DSLR, I highly recommend doing the photography tour over the general tour. The general tour is cheaper, but you won’t get the same clear, people free shots that you’ll get on the photography tour. If you do not have a DSLR and tripod (a tripod is necessary, the light is low, and long exposures are needed), then you’ll have to do the general tour. That is their rule, and rightfully so.