Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Grand Canyon Heat Part 2: Here Comes the Rain

A small pine tree finds a way to live on the lip of the canyon
Day Two of our Toroweap adventure brought tempratures nearing 120 degrees during the day, overcast skies in the afternoon and a evening windstorm strom enough to rip the door of my tent irrepearably off its zipper. Oh, and another crop of excellent images!

I missed sunrise on Day Two and from what I've seen from the other photographers who made it out of their sleeping bags in time, it was an amazing sunrise, not to be missed. (Have no fear, I made it to the next day's sunrise!) By mid-afternoon a bank of high, thick clouds rolled in to blanket the area. Aaron, Jim and I headed up to the overlook for a while, fearing that with the cloud cover we would all miss out on a chance to photograph the sunset. Turns out we were right, there was no sunset that night, but we were able to capture some sweet images anyway.

The glow and indirect light of an overcast day can be tricky to photograph in. It's a kind of light that is better suited to macro photography, not wide vistas, but I've found that the low contrast, even light can really make colors pop in a scene, as the image to the right can attest. You can see the cloud buildup in the distance hints at the growing storm, but the real proof lies to the east, behind the camera.

Rain in the Distance from atop Toroweap Overlook
From almost the same position as I shot the sunset the night before, this image clearly shows the overhead bank of clouds and the streaks of falling rain. I've seen the rain falling in the distance before but not all that often and never before when I've had a camera in hand and that makes me think this is a unique photo. Lots of people have seen Toroweap and lots of people have probably seen rain falling in the distance like this, but how many people have seen rain falling in the distance from this spectacular vantage point?