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.

Grand Canyon Heat Part 1

Grand Canyon Light Show

Back in July, a group of fellow photographers and I ventured into the summer heat and headed for the remote Toroweap Overlook on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. The South Rim is nice and easy to get to, but for a photographer, the crowds of people can drive you insane trying to get a shot without someone standing in it. The remote, undeveloped North Rim is much more difficult to get to but a vast improvement in terms of crowd control. The 3 hour drive over rough, rock strewn dirt roads deters all but the most dedicated.

Count myself and the other eight photographers as some of those dedicated few. Over the course of the three days we spent out there, we saw less than 10 other folks who weren't part of our group. The road had a lot to do with it but so did the heat. The mercury rose upwards of 113 degrees while we were there. With that kind of heat to contend with, we woke early to shoot the sunrise and quickly retreated to the shade of a pop-up canopy to drink water and wait out the day's heat. After a quick dinner, we would emerge from the safety of the canopy once more to shoot the sunset and enjoy the cool evening breezes. That is if you can call 95 degree wind a cool breeze!

The image to the right, Grand Canyon Light Show, was taken mid-afternoon on our first day on the rim. Mid-morning through mid-afternoon aren't typical times to shoot landscape images as the light isn't as sweet as it is during the "Magic Hour." But in this instance, I really enjoyed the play of the light through the clouds and the shadows cast down into the canyon. Those shadows and the play between light and dark through the canyon would not have been possible in late afternoon Magic Hour. Rules were made to be broken!