Antelope Canyon

Antelope Canyon is a slot canyon located in Navajo territory in Arizona.  I am one of many people to be drawn there to shoot the shapes carved out of sandstone by rushing water.  Flash flooding and erosion created these narrow passageways to the delight of many photographers including myself.  From the ground level looking down, it looks like a wide crack in the the landscape;  however when you shimmy through the causeway, the beauty of light and shadow playing over the textures and contours is awe inspiring.
 I was fortunate to have arrived at this geological phenomenon on the perfect overcast day.  The medium cloud cover was perfect for diffusing the light coming from above.  If it was a sunny day, there would have been and overly extreme contrast between the shadows and the illuminated sandstone.  Instead, soft light bounced around the canyon walls leaving some detail in the shadows.  I wanted to have a lot of depth of field so as to keep all of the graceful lines sharp in my photos, therefore I came prepared with a tripod.  By keeping my camera still, it was possible to have a small aperture, a low iso and and slow shutter speed to attain the sharpest, best quality image even in a somewhat low light situation.  
It was difficult to choose my favourite image of this Canyon but I chose this one to talk about because,to me, the sandstone looks a lot like the water that once rushed through here, and that is cool.


  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ian McShane

Image
One of my favourite villains of all time is Ian McShane.  He was the super villain on “Agent Cody Banks” that I photographed the stills on back in 2002.  I would later become an even bigger fan of his watching him play the town bad guy in ‘Deadwood”.  He has has that wonderful British charm that translates well into his nasty characters.  His charisma and sense of humour on set always made the crew smile despite the abnormally long hours we worked on this particular feature.   He has a very characteristic expression with the raised right eyebrow and slight snarl on his lips.  I wanted to capture this exact expression nice and close with him looking right at the lens.  When filming on set you are photographing while the actors are performing so you must set it up later if you want to get a shot of them looking at you.  We were filming in this very futuristic bad guy lair which was an ideal spot to get the perfect portrait.  Ian was happy to accommodate my wishes and I got the desi
Read more

Monsters

Image
Quite often it is the job of the studio photographer to flatter the subject as much as possible.  Women most often are lit and photographed in a way to make them look flawless and ageless.  It is not everyday that a real live monster steps into your studio and it is your job to glorify all of the gory details.  What fun!!!!  Here are 2 Zombies that I shot for the poster art for the film "Cabin in The Woods".  To transform these performers into Zombies it takes hours of laborious work from an amazing special effects team and a lot of patience from the ones being transformed.  My first inclination when photographing the undead would be to throw most of the creature into shadow and let the viewer's imagination take over.  However, upon looking at the incredible details of the make up and costume, I realized that I had light it is such a way that the details could be seen and still maintain a mysterious feeling with shadow. I chose rim lighting from behind the subject on bot
Read more

Kids in a Mexican Parking Lot

Image
Mazatlan, Mexico is the place where my partner grew up and a wonderful sunny, beachy place to have relatives to visit!  After struggling to communicate with an extended family in my terrible Spanish,  I grabbed my camera and went out into the night to engage in a visual language that I could understand.  I was searching for areas that had interesting night light that I could photograph time exposures of.  Rolando, my partner and guide took me to beautiful places overlooking the city showing the many night lights of Mazatlan.  Later, we got a little more up close and personal and just walked along the streets.  Then I saw them.  Three kids just hanging out in an empty parking lot.  It did not appear as though they were playing or waiting, they were just there; showcased by the colourful mix of orange sodium lights and fluorescent.  I felt the need to capture this image but I had to talk the the kids first.  They needed to stay still for a time exposure plus, it would be a bonus to place
Read more