from a couple weeks back, navajo point, south rim, grand canyon.
took a good friend from back east who'd never seen the canyon up for the afternoon. as sunset approached, he was skeptical about light, as the western horizon was veiled with high cirrus with no apparent holes. with the winter sun position, you can't actually see the horizon because of the intervening kaibab plateau, so i counseled patience and hoped for a possible post-sunset twilight, earth shadow coloring of the eastern sky.
sure enough, after the temporal disheartening dimming of light that comes as the sun retreats below the horizon, all of a sudden the eastern sky lit up in yellows and pinks, acting like a giant reflector/scrim, significantly brightening the landscape with the gauzy (water vapor) pink & orange light you see here.
it's so amazing (my pulse raced, lik-like!) to see the canyon light up like this, especially after the light has already diminished considerably after the actual setting of the sun. to drink in all that color, i very quickly slapped the singh-ray vari ND on the front of the 24-70, dialed in enough light reduction for a 25 second exposure, repositioned the 3 f/stop hard lee gnd, metered a bit hot for the fading light over the length of the exposure and hoped for the best.
using the longer exposure captured an amazing amount of color, so much so that i felt it necessary to reduce saturation in post-processing. it's a bit idealized using these shooting parameters, but i can certainly tell you it was an amazing three minutes of light.
needless to say, my friend, a very experienced yacht photographer from florida who has seen his share of colorful sunset skies, was blown away by his virgin grand canyon experience. i hadn't expected much from this lark of a trip and we were pumped for the two hour drive home to sedona.
Very nice - I like the subtle shades along the canyon walls in the reflected light from the clouds. Your friend got a real treat for his first trip to canyon.
Derek, great narrative and awesome shot, what I find even more impressive however is the complete thought process and quick reaction which creates this end result. Your work and process continues to amaze me Dean
