Return Trip to Antelope Canyon

Last year I made a trip to Antelope Canyon, and I wrote about it here. This year, I was back in the area. My family was unanimous that they all enjoyed the walk through Antelope Canyon, so we visited again.

I have a better camera this time and I was looking forward to better pictures. I used the same 24mm f2.8 lens as last time. My old camera is cropped. My new one is full-frame. The net effect is that the old one could only effectively shoot at 36mm. My new one can shoot at 24mm. So the new one can shoot a wider effective focal length and its sensor is much better in low light. So in we went with my ISO set to 1600, sometimes adjusting to 2000.

This time was earlier in the day, so it was darker in the canyon. And it was cold. We weren't the first ones in, but pretty close, so I was able to get a few shots with no people in the frame. I found myself shooting less than last time, but happier with the shots that I got. Here are my favorites.

Upper Antelope Canyon Entrance

Looking Straight Up

A Rare Forward View with no People

Near the Downstream Entrance

Antelope Canyon

During my recent trip to Arizona, I had a chance to visit Upper Antelope Canyon. I was with my family, and we drove out to one of the two (we saw two, maybe there are more) places to pay for a guide to take us to the Canyon. There were hundreds of people there, even though it was pretty cold. They put nine people apiece in the dirty, run-down SUVs, one driver and the rest tourists. Then our driver joined the other drivers in a dash down the highway to the turn onto a dirt road, which quickly gave way to a dry stream bed. There was at least a dozen other SUVs, all going the same direction, all plowing through sand and gravel and ruts on the stream bed. The truck tires would fall into ruts and follow, like a train on a track, leading to sudden sideways motions. I held on to the seat under me to keep from hitting my head on the ceiling when we hit bumps. Finally we reached the entrance and parked next to the other SUVs that were already there.

We got out into the cold and entered the canyon as a group. The floor is sand; the canyon is narrow enough to touch both sides at once in many places, and it was crowded. The crowds actually helped because we had to wait for the groups ahead of us to go through. I think our guide would have rushed us through faster if he could. We could sometimes see the sky, but most of the time we simply had wavy sandstone all around. I knew when we started that we wouldn't have the summertime shafts of sunlight reaching the floor, and it was dark in most of the canyon. It even seemed cave-like in some places.

The crowd was milling about, with each group's guide showing features and advising people on photography subjects. The guides know the places to shoot and how to work just about any camera or cell phone. Gigabytes of space were being consumed each minute with all the photography that was going on.

I was pleasantly surprised after the fact that my camera functioned well. My DSLR is terrible at high ISO settings, with awful noise. But I had no choice: I was quickly at 1000 ISO because that was the only way I could get fast-enough shutter speeds. I used a 24mm f2.8 lens, and I'm happy with that choice over the other lenses in my bag. That canyon is one subject where the noise is there in the images, but nearly impossible to see. The guide leading the group behind us was (annoyingly) using a green laser pointer to show things to his group. Some of my photos have green lines as a result.

So we walked through, taking pictures with my DSLR and all of our phones, and eventually we reached the other end, which opens up into a wide, dry stream bed just like the one at the entrance. We waited there a few minutes, and then pressed through the crowd, back through the canyon to the parking area, stopping not even once. Then it was back in the SUV, racing the other SUVs on the dry stream, holding on to the seat again, and eventually back onto the highway and back to the place we started. We got out, said goodbye to our guide, and then he loaded up his next group to do it again.

Enough with the story... Here are the pictures.

Laser Pointer Trail

The crowd

Horseshoe Bend

During a recent trip to Arizona, I spent a couple of nights in Page. While there, I stopped by Horseshoe Bend of the Colorado River. Given that it was cold and a little cloudy and near the end of the day, I expected the place to be quiet. No such luck. There were hundreds of people there; the parking lot was full, including a few tour buses.

There's a steep hill to climb from the parking lot. The trail is loose sand, like walking on a beach. At the top, there's no real clue that the river has cut such a deep canyon, just a descent through more sandy trails. There's really no sense at all until reaching the cliff edge. And what a cliff it is. I don't have a fisheye lens for my camera, so I resorted to a panorama taken with my phone.

Horseshoe Bend

Just as with other canyons on this river (Grand Canyon, The Goosenecks), there are lots of places to get right to the edge; you can kill yourself by being careless. There were people on every rock, taking pictures, looking into the canyon. It was very cool.