Antelope Canyon Navaho Tribal Park, Arizona:

Left: a ray of sunlight pierces Upper Antelope Canyon. (I stitched this panorama from 3 images.)

Antelope Canyon Photo Tips:

Where to go:

• Page, Arizona: Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons are very easy to visit, great for both children and adults. Expect crowds. Drive there with your private car (or pay more for a tour booked from Page). Different Navajo families operate Upper and Lower Canyons, which explains the separate admission fees:
• The Upper Canyon is an easy flat walk in sand. To get there, drive east of Page, Arizona on Highway 98 for several miles, to just before milepost 299. You will see an entrance booth for Upper Antelope Canyon on the right (south). Pay at the toll booth, park your car, and wait for the next 4WD shuttle & guide to take you to the slot entrance. In 2005, Navaho lands entry fee was $6 (good for one day only), plus $15 for the guided tour & ride to Upper Canyon.
• Lower Antelope Canyon: Across the highway, to the north of Upper Canyon’s toll booth, you will see a sign marking the short road to Lower Antelope Canyon parking lot (Antelope Point Road, Navaho Route N22B). Pay at the office and walk along the marked trail, which descends into Lower Antelope Canyon on easy ladders and slanted sandstone. The Lower Canyon has less dust, fewer tourists, the best formations, and requires no guide, which allows you much more freedom & time to photograph. Walking straight through without stopping would take only half an hour, but the amazing cathedrals in stone should slow you down, awestruck. In 2005, Navaho lands entry fee was $6 (paid only once if seeing both canyons on the same day), plus Lower Canyon tour fee was $13.
• Antelope Canyon Navaho Tribal Park is run by the Navaho Nation.

When to go:

• Antelope Canyon is open April-October. Closed November-March. The canyons are subject to weather closures, especially in hot July-August which is dangerous flash flood season. In May-July (closer to summer solstice), the sun shines most directly into the slot canyons, for exciting light shafts.
• Midweek is better than weekends, to avoid crowds.
• Wait for a sunny day with the sun high overhead, best midday, during normal Canyon opening hours 9-5:00. Light quality will be very dull on a cloudy day, not as good for photography. I shot my images on April 12-13, 2006. I recommend 10am to 3pm, in April or October.
• I recommend all day in each canyon (two days total) for serious photography. If you are sightseeing without a camera, you only need an hour or two in each canyon.
• Your guide, required in the Upper Canyon, may let you linger for photography (which may cost a little more for extra hours). Large groups come through continuously in Upper Canyon. You must take shots quickly. Try to determine your shot settings at each spot before placing the tripod in the narrow path.
• You have more freedom to photograph in the Lower Canyon, where no guide is required.
  

Photographic techniques for slot canyons:

• The best lighting in slot canyons is brightly bounced indirect sunlight on the sandstone, and also shafts of sunlight piercing the dusty air.
• Avoid including directly sunlit rocks in the image (which will either lose detail in the sunlit portion or overly darken the rest of the image). An exception to this is capturing a column of sunlight in the dusty air. To get the best shots of shafts of sunlight, shoot when the sun is highest in the sky, such as around noon (though best times vary in each spot by time of day and season). Throw sand up into the light column and quickly shoot the falling sunlit dust & sand. But if others are present, get their permission before tossing sand. Crowds may also stir up enough dust to brighten the rays of sunlight.
• On a digital camera, check your LCD frequently to confirm image quality. Fill your bell-shaped histogram with good shadow detail, without cutting off highlights.
• If you use film, expose for the brightest rock or subject (but avoid including directly sunlit rocks in the image, unless your subject itself is sunlit).
• Upper Canyon is darker: I shot exposures of about 0.5 to 2 seconds at ISO 50 at f/8 on my Canon Powershot Pro1.
• Lower Canyon is shallower, a little brighter, and has the most interesting rock formations: I shot exposures of about 0.2 to 1 second at ISO 50 at f/8 on my Canon Powershot Pro1.
• Have fun! This is a fantastic place, despite the crowds of people. Smile and be friendly to everyone, and patiently let people pass in the narrow slots. Many other great slot canyons are available in Utah and Arizona with few other people.
  

Photo equipment to bring:

• Bring a tripod, flashlight, jacket, snacks, & water. The crowds of people in the Upper Canyon will make use of a tripod more challenging than in the longer and lesser traveled Lower Canyon.
• I recommend a digital camera over a film camera since you can immediately determine the exposure and appearance of images.  I don’t recommend changing lenses in these dusty canyons (keep your digital sensor clean with a hand-squeezed blower).
• I recommend a wide angle lens such as 17-35mm on a DSLR (or ~27 to 52mm on 35mm-film cameras). But a 24mm lens (in terms of 35mm-film) will be even more useful in these tight slot canyons.
• You can effectively widen your lens angle by stitching together multiple shots using software (such as my light shaft image above left).
  • For stitching, take each shot overlapped by a third, with exactly the same focus, exposure and white balance (such as using Manual mode), using the DSLR at about 24mm (or 36mm in terms of 35mm-film cameras). Use DSLR 17mm if you have to, but stitching may not line up as well on the edges.
  • Least distortion for stitching is usually within the range of 35 to 50mm (in terms of 35mm-film cameras).
  • On a typical DSLR (with an APS-C-sized sensor with ~1.5x field of view crop factor), 24mm is equivalent to a 36mm lens on a 35mm-film camera. (But if you have invested in a full-framed sensor, the lenses are the same size as for film). A DSLR 24mm lens (or longer) usually stitches into a panorama better than 17mm.
  • Canon supplies a good panorama stitch program in their Zoombrowser program provided free with many of their digital cameras.
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3 greatly improves the Photomerge feature (found under the File>Automate> menu) versus previous Photoshop versions such as CS2 or 7.x.

 Below Left: A ray of sunlight shines through a water-carved hole in Lower Antelope Canyon.

Below right: This is the other side of the same water-carved hole in in Lower Antelope Canyon, a few hours later. (Similar image available without a person in the image.)

Below Left: Dust and sunlight fall through a water-carved hole in Lower Antelope Canyon.

Below right: Rays of sunlight pierce the depths of Upper Antelope Canyon

Below left: photographer in Lower Antelope Canyon.

Left: Swirling pattern in Lower Antelope Canyon.

    Below right: Sage brush in Lower Antelope Canyon.

Below: Sculpted sandstone in Upper Antelope Canyon:


Left: Colorful light bounces onto four walls of Lower Antelope Canyon, by Carol Dempsey.
   
    Below right: light gets darker and bluer as it bounces into the depths of Antelope Canyon, by Carol Dempsey.

Left: Colorful slot which darkens with depth in Lower Antelope Canyon.

Below right: Eroded teeth recede into the distance in Lower Antelope Canyon.
 

The Wave

Fossilized sand dunes in a side canyon of The Wave, Coyote Buttes, Arizona.

Above: The Wave, Coyote Buttes, located on the Arizona side of Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area, which is public land managed by the United States BLM.

Left: The Wave, Coyote Buttes, located on the Arizona side of Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area, which is public land managed by the United States BLM.

 

Above right: Coyote Buttes, Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area, Arizona.

Above: Wrather Arch, a short hike from the Paria Canyon backpacking trip, on the Arizona side of Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area.



Left: Sunlight warms the cool watery slot, deep within Bucksin Gulch, accessible from Wire Pass trailhead in Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area.

Left: We carry backpacks through the cathedral-like Paria Canyon, which crosses from Utah into Arizona a little south of the confluence with Buckskin Gulch. The Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area spans across both Utah & Arizona.

Below right: Sandstone layers. Vermilion Cliffs, Arizona.

       

Below right: Royal arch. Paria River Canyon, Utah.

Left: Wild Claret Cup Cactus, Utah.

        Below right: Cracks in mud. Paria River, Utah.

Above: Southwest USA Page 1 of 9: Arizona & Utah border:
Antelope Canyon ~ Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness Area

Copyright 1990-2006 by Tom Dempsey. Photographs may not be copied without permission. Custom Print Prices.

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