Sunday, August 27, 2017

Antelope Canyon

Hurricane Harvey

My heart goes out to those struggling to survive Harvey in Texas. I'm not a big fan of Texas but no one deserves to be confronted with the disaster that awaits them this week. There will be flooding and a lot of damage before Harvey moves on. Let is all hope "The Donald" can get his head out of his a&% long enough to get the federal government to help with the cleanup and rescue operations. Enough said on that issue.

Antelope Canyon

I was in Antelope Canyon last year but the place is so beautiful I thought it was a good time to show another image from the place. I went in the early morning as I wanted to see what the canyon looked like with early sun. It was a different place for sure and that was a nice feeling. I didn't have any tripod or even a monopod as they are not allowed except during the special, and much more expensive, photographer's tours later in the day so I had to be extra steady. Most of the pictures came out blurred even with my stabilizer running because I tend to be more than a bit unsteady these days as I grow older. Some of the longest exposures were more than a second and not even the best lens stabilization can fix shaking that long. So I had to throw away a lot of images.

This photo is made up of 3 images, a bracketed series. What is interesting about the image is how "fluid" it looks. The lighter areas appear almost translucent, like a glassy surface is spread across the rocks. It's not, of course, but looks that way. What's happening here is the light, already diffuse from striking other rocky surfaces, is illuminating the right and left sides of this protrusion and making them appear like water is running across their surfaces. The effect only appears on the brighter exposures in the bracketing. It is a very interesting artifact of the light conditions and probably only appears in the early morning. Just another fantastic aspect of this very special canyon. I have to go back again some day and see what else is going on there.

Antelope Canyon - 35mm, F4,HDR,ISO 800,license CC BY-NC 4.0

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