I'm sitting in a campground near Page, AZ. The sun is low in the sky and a cool breeze ruffles the flaps on my tent. It's an unusual sight, my little production studio. I've got a complete editing setup in my large 4-person tent and for the last several hours I've been working diligently to edit a few of the photos I've taken over the last two days. Yesterday alone I took almost 200 images including several panos and a ton of HDR image sets. So far I've managed to merge a 33 image HDR pano of Horseshoe Bend near Page at sunset and an HDR of Ship Rock, an ancient volcanic vent that rises high about the surrounding pastures in the 4-corners of New Mexico. There's a lot more to do and I'll get to as much as I can as the sun goes down and I can see the monitor better. I've decided to color correct everything using 5600 Kelvin artificial light so the colors are as true as I can make them.
I made Shiprock, NM, on Friday night and, after a bologna sandwich (with processed American cheese no less) and a dill pickle, I drove across a cattle grate and parked my pickup just up the road so it wasn't visible from the road. It was dark and very desolate but necessary if I wanted to be near the rock as the sun came up. Froze my ass off for the most part and slept fitfully. Awoke around 4 to see the vague outlines of a dozen large cows grazing contently on the scrub brush a few feet from my truck. At 5:45 my tablet's alarm went off and I got up to prepare. It was very cold, near freezing, and I wasn't really dressed for the bitter wind. Found a hoodie behind my seat which helped some and put on my hiking boots. Day one of the adventure was about to begin.
Ship Rock
This is a unique place. Millions of years ago the entire 4-corners area was a cauldron of volcanic and tectonic activity. Much of the landscape we see and admire today developed during this period. Ship Rock is just one of many unique geological wonders from that era. What's unique about this spire is a series of large, decaying, hardened lava 'cracks' radiating from the central vent. As the magma surged toward the surface it forced the ground violently upward, opening three large cracks which subsequently filled with hot magma and then cooled in place. Over the years the surrounding soft sandstone eroded away, exposing these huge slabs of harder rock. Imagine a major interstate turned on it's side and you'd be close to what they look like. Black, old and slowly falling apart.
Ship Rock is sacred to the Navajo and they aren't really pleased when others disturb the area. They're OK with photographers as long as they're not too obvious but lately climbers have appeared on the spire and that's not tolerated. So I had to be discrete, meaning no tent and no lights. It was a long, cold night out there waiting for the sun to rise.
As I waited for the sunrise I watched the horizon for the first glimmers of light. There were clouds to the east and they promised to deliver a very beautiful event. Around 6 am the sky began to lighten and it was gorgeous. I caught it all, but you'll have to wait another day for those images (panos included). I think it's worth the wait.
I drove my truck very slowly over the rutted dirt road, growing ever closer to the spire. I was alone except for a few cows that grazed contently nearby, oblivious to my presence. I had to hurry as the sun was quickly approaching the horizon and I knew the beautiful reds of early sunrise would only last a few minutes. Finally I had to stop, rushing to get my camera and tripod setup. I didn't have to wait very long for the spectacle to begin and it was over almost before it started. 5 minutes tops. But what an amazing 5 minutes with the monument turning a warm, inviting red as it reached out to embrace the new day. I snapped away, one picture every 30 seconds. As the reds intensified I switched to bracketed exposure, working to get as much of the color as possible. And then, even quicker than it came, it was over. But the images were there to assure me that it was a beautiful as I'd anticipated.
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| Ship Rock, NM at sunrise - 16 mm (1.6 crop), f/16, 1/4 sec, ISO 100 License CC BY-NC 4.0 |
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