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Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Little Colorado at Cameron, AZ


This was the view from our hotel room in Cameron Arizona of the Little Colorado.  Cameron Arizona is a little town east of the east entrance to the Grand Canyon National Park.  The Little Colorado meets up with the Colorado up river west of here.  This view is towards the west, approximately.  We stayed at the hotel at the Cameron Trading Post which is a nice little store, restaurant and hotel that must get lots of business at most times of the year.  The exposure was 1/500 seconds at f/11, ISO 200 with my 24mm lens.


Here is a panorama assembled from the previous image and 6 others covering almost 180 degrees of azimuth.  On the right is the highway 89 bridge over the Little Colorado.  This view is centered approximately towards the north.  This panorama was assembled using Hugin on my Linux box.

The view up Canyon.


  There are no bad views in the Grand Canyon.  This view up canyon from Yavapai Point shows the layering really well in the bright sunlight.  At the right along the rim is Desert View and with a telephoto, you can see the Watchtower.  This image was taken with my 24mm lens on my 70D and an exposure of 1/350 seconds at f/6.7, ISO 200.


Here is a telephoto shot of the Watchtower at Desert View with my 75-300mm lens at 300mm focal length.  The exposure was 1/1500 seconds at f/9.5, ISO 400.

A Canyon Sunset from Desert View


We watched the sunset during our Grand Canyon trip last month from next to the Watchtower at Desert View near the eastern entrance to the Grand Canyon.  I was hoping for a more colorful sunset, but the nearly completely overcast sky limited the colors present.  Here are a couple HDR combines, the first looking west into the canyon below the main visitors center on the South Rim.  I combined 5 exposures at 1 stop offsets centered on the metered proper exposure.  The shortest exposure which allowed the brightly lit sun to be visible in the sky was 1/45 seconds at f/6.7, ISO 200.  The longest exposure was 1/3 seconds at f/6.7, ISO 200.  All with my 24mm lens and the camera was on a tripod.


This view upriver produced some spectacular colors.  The view of the river in the bottom of the canyon was also quite spectacular.  This HDR combine used 5 exposures from the shortest of 1/30 seconds at f/6.7, ISO 200 to 1/2 seconds at f/6.7, ISO 200 with my 24mm lens on my 70D.

Friday, March 07, 2014

The View from Yavapai Point & Ansel Scotti's interpretatoin....


This view from Yavapai Point in the Grand Canyon shows many of the canyon's features also visible from the area around the main visitors center.  You can see the trail out to Plateau Point near the bottom.  The Colorado river is not visible in this image but can be seen from this viewpoint in two small areas but you can see the Geological story of the Colorado Plateau laid out vertically in the canyon walls.  Just right of center just below the horizon is Isis Temple, the sharp rock pillar on top of the broad reddish pyramid like structure.  This image was taken with my 24mm SIgma lens with an exposure of 1/350 seconds at f/6.7, ISO 200.


It is fun to look at images in black and white.  In this case, I took the image above and converted it to black and white and played with layers and curves for a bit, thinking about the image as great photographers like Ansel Adams might capture the scene.