The Grand Canyon -- A Photographers Dream

Colorado CJ · Joined: 29 Jul 2012 Posts: 210 Location: Northern Colorado

Hello everyone, life seems to have got in the way and I haven't shot/posted in a while.

Last week though, I took a short trip with my mom and dad through the desert south west. As usual on trips, my camera came along for the ride.

Our main destination was the Grand Canyon, with side trips to try to find my grandpa's old mine he had in the area in the 1950's.

This was my first time visiting the Canyon and I was in for a real surprise! The immensity of the canyon, as they say, has to be seen to be believed, and it is still unbelievable. The human eye can't comprehend the sheer size of this canyon, where looking across from the south rim to the north rim is over 10 miles, and it is nearly 1 mile deep. I tried hard to capture that feel in photos, both with my D600 and with my medium format film camera. I don't know if I have succeeded though.

Anyway, this will be somewhat of a running thread as I have just started processing the images and have yet to get into my darkroom (converted bathrooom) to develope/print the film images.

Here are the first two I've managed to process so far though. Both shot from the D600 using a Samyang 35mm F1.4 lens.

I'm pretty clumsy at titling my photos, usually just titling by date and location. I thought I'd try to do a little better than that for these though.

The first is titled "The Grand Canyon -- In Fading Light"

It was shot a few minutes after sunset, with the canyon in near darkness. The exposure was 30 seconds long at 200 ISO. I had to use a small aperture as I wanted to get the full frame in focus and the rocks on the edge of the cliff were only a couple of feet away, so I used F16.

Luckily the wind died down a few minutes earlier as the tripod legs (and mine) were only a few inches from a 4,000 ft, vertical drop Wink

The Grand Canyon -- In Fading Light by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

This next images was shot roughly 20 minutes before the first a few hundred yards away. The sun was still above the horizon giving a little more color to the canyon.

Again I am not good with titles, so just named this "The Grand Canyon of the Colorado"

Grand Canyon of the Colorado by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

That's it for now. I have a lot of family visiting, so I am processing images in little snippets. I hope to start on the film developing on Monday.

I'll be sure to update this thread as soon as I have more images finished.

Thanks for the look!

kds315* · Expire: 2021-03-09

Awesome, looking forward for more to come!

Colorado CJ · Joined: 29 Jul 2012 Posts: 210 Location: Northern Colorado

Thank you Klaus!

Here's a couple more taken with the Samyang 35mm F1.4 lens. Tomorrow I'll process and post some taken with my ultrawide 14mm lens.

Evening's Light by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

Canyon's Edge by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

Rick1779 · Expire: 2014-06-06

great job

kds315* · Expire: 2021-03-09

More amazing shots! Looking forward to seeing teh UW ones!

Attila · Expire: 2025-11-18

Awesome! Many thanks to share them!

Colorado CJ · Joined: 29 Jul 2012 Posts: 210 Location: Northern Colorado

Thanks guys.

Here are a few more.

This was taken looking down Mohave Point

Mohave-Point by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

These two were taken earlier in the day with the 14mm UltraWide lens, a Samyang 14mm F2.8. This lens is so wide on a full frame camera, that I had to be careful to not get my boots in the vertical shot.

Sandstone-Ledge by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

Grand-Canyon by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

This last one was taken the previous day while driving through Monument Valley. We didn't explore the valley this time as we wanted to get to the canyon before sundown.

Monuments-of-the-Valley by Colorado CJ, on Flickr

Hopefully I'll have some time to develop a couple of rolls from the medium format camera tomorrow. I'll probably just scan the negatives and post them instead of making wet prints/scanning as I am still pretty new to the darkroom.