Arizona eScape by Ginette

Arizona eScape
by Ginette

Written in 2005 -- these photos were all shot on a Nikon D2X with either a 12-24mm or the 24-120mm Nikkor lens. We knew there would be no power outlets down in the canyon and decided not to pack a solar charging system, and so relied on taking three battery packs for the 12 days. This was the first serious field outing we did with this camera and we were quite cautious with power usage, but we found out we didn't have to be. Shooting all we wanted to, checking histograms for most shots, we almost made it through the entire 12-day trip on one battery ! We were very impressed with what Nikon has done for power management on this generation of camera. What I also found interesting, was that two professionals who were also part of the workshop brought along nearly identical D2X kits, the only difference was that one other also brought a 80-400mm zoom (this being in addition to their large format gear).

This photo was taken up near the top of the North Canyon hike in early morning.

Walking back down the path we came across a wonderful juxtaposition of two different cliff colours, the near cliff showing a strong face image near the top and the rear cliff (which is way, way back across the other side of the river) a delightful salmon pink.

Along the same path, at pretty much the same place as the photo above but down at her feet, was this dried mud flat. The mud was lit by reflected light from a yellow sandstone cliff face, while the rock was lit by the magnificent blue sky. The "glow" arising off this photo is unfortunately muted by the conversion to a web-suitable file.

Back on the beach, Ginette came across this interesting still life. We have no pretensions that this is a natural grouping of stones, but it is the way we found it !

Further downstream to Granite Rapids, we came across some of the wildlife of the canyon, in this case a Great Blue Heron, who condescended to stay still long enough that Ginette could capture this portrait from a moving boat, in the shade. Since we typically see GBH's in marshes and bogs back in Canada were we live, this is a nice departure.

One of many types of rocks and rock formations in the canyon about one-third along the trip is large outcroppings of schist. This gets polished by the river water and is eroded into wonderful shapes, generally referred to as fluted schist. The natural colour of this schist is nearly black, but in the right lighting conditions it is adept at picking up reflected light, and especially the blue light from the sky above.

Everybody needs to get a photo of Elves Chasm. A very beautiful spot, tricky to climb to as the path is very rugged and is armed with razor sharp flint boulders.

Slightly out of order, looking upstream from the confluence of the Colorado and the Little Colorado Ginette saw this V shaped cloud which mimicked the V shape of the mountains. She was probably the only person on the workshop to get this shot since everyone else was intent on looking the other way with large format (which is not good for rapid re-composition).

The lower Matkatamiba Canyon area is one of my favourites and Ginette picked up a nice reflection here. This was not as easy as the previous time I was here in 2000 since there was more water flowing this time and the sky had a high cirrus veil of clouds that caused the reflected light to be less intense (while helping keep shadows a bit better lit, I have to admit)

Meanwhile, on the upper level of Matkat, there is this shot looking down into the side canyon that she was standing in to obtain the photo above.

Downstream in Pumpkin Springs, neither of us were that thrilled by the spring itself, but there was some beautifully eroded rock formations on the downstream side of the beach area, which had many holes and arches ground into the rock. Many photo ops, this is just one.

Finally, this has NOTHING to do with Arizona, but is actually Bryce Canyon in Utah. This is a nicely lit example of the hoodoos found in Bryce, with warm reflected light and back lighting. Ginette sees in the white formation on the lower left a large faced sheep standing on a pedestal (she is a knitter by the way so sheep are much sought after) !

Back to Main Index