Studio 47 Photography Photo Blog

As promised a photograph from Lower Antelope Slot Canyon.  For more information on the Slot Canyons check out my post the bear.  The previous two posts and photos had to do with Upper Antelope Slot Canyon, which is arguably the more well photographed one.

The Lower antelope , while almost across the road from Upper, seems to be far less traveled.  Maybe because it’s more of a walk about than Upper and a little bit more vertical changes making it a little bit more to get around as opposed to walking in to the end and turning around and walking out (that’s what happens in Upper).  The photography tour in Lower is unguided, and this is kind of a good thing.  They essentially bring you down there and then let you wander on your own for a good 2.5 hours or so.

Being uncrowded, you can have parts of the canyon all to yourself for 10 to 15 minutes at a time, at least in the offseason.  We were there in October.  The only issue with being there late in the year like that however, is that the sun is much lower on the horizon then so you don’t get the streaks of sunlight randomly penetrating down to the canyon floor like you do during the summer.

Like I mentioned about Upper Canyon, you’ll have to have a tripod at least 6 inches in height in order to “qualify” for the photography tour, but you’ll want one anyway, to be able to explore the limits of playing with light.

One of the fringe benefits when we were in the canyon was that one of the Navajo guides that ran the regular tour would walk through playing the guitar and he seemed to have quite the preference for Red Hot Chili Peppers.  So I got to hear a fair chunk of the Chili Peppers catalog at some point over the 2.5 hours.

It was cool though,  he did a good job and there was something ethereal about having some of the songs echo through the canyon seemingly from out of the wind.  Surprisingly the sound was really good in the canyon.  I wouldn’t have expected that.

Anyway, I took about 500 pictures in the canyon and this is just one of my favorites.  Not sure why really.  In fact this was one of those photographs that when I first went through them , it didn’t really jump out at me.  But after not checking them out for 8 months or so I revisited the folder and it really caught my eye.  I just liked the pop of the color, the various textures of the sandstone, and the depth that is projected by the shadow and lights.  Oh and that cool piece of driftwood stuck up in the top of the canyon.

Man would I have loved to get a piece of that to take home and throw on the lathe.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Canon 40d, ISO 100, Canon 17-55 IS f2.8 @ 28 mm, f9, 2 sec.