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Navajo Nation, Arizona. Slot canyons do this thing where your brain starts finding shapes in the stone — faces, animals, figures that aren't really there but also completely are once you see them. I call this one Bat Face. The sandstone swoops and curves, and if you tilt your head just right, there's your bat face, etched into 190-million-year-old Navajo sandstone.
Lower Antelope was pretty busy the day I visited. I asked our guide if I could go last so I could use my tripod without slowing everyone else down, and he agreed. So I let the group move ahead and followed along, taking photos as I went. It was a rare opportunity that has vanished as visiting Antelope Canyon has become more popular.
At midday, when those famous beams of light shoot down through the narrow opening above, the whole canyon glows orange and gold. The light bounces between the smooth walls until you can't quite tell where it's coming from. The Navajo call this place Hazdistazí — “spiral rock arches” — and that's exactly what flash floods have been carving here for five or six million years. Every time water roars through this slot, it polishes the sandstone a little smoother, deepens the spirals a little more.
The colours shift as you move: burnt orange where the iron oxidizes, purple-grey in the shadows, sometimes a flash of cream or coral where the rock catches direct sun. There's a particular satisfaction in finding an angle that works, in this case looking up to frame the formation against the slot of blue sky above. The challenge is the dynamic range of deep shadow to bright sky, but that's part of what makes these canyons compelling for landscape photography.
Printed on Chromaluxe metal panels with a gloss white finish to bring out the rich contrast and make the oranges and purples dance, though satin or matte white are also available. Each print is scratch resistant, waterproof, and floats an inch off the wall.
For anyone who's ever stared at clouds long enough to find a face staring back.
Navajo Nation, Arizona. Slot canyons do this thing where your brain starts finding shapes in the stone — faces, animals, figures that aren't really there but also completely are once you see them. I call this one Bat Face. The sandstone swoops and curves, and if you tilt your head just right, there's your bat face, etched into 190-million-year-old Navajo sandstone.
Lower Antelope was pretty busy the day I visited. I asked our guide if I could go last so I could use my tripod without slowing everyone else down, and he agreed. So I let the group move ahead and followed along, taking photos as I went. It was a rare opportunity that has vanished as visiting Antelope Canyon has become more popular.
At midday, when those famous beams of light shoot down through the narrow opening above, the whole canyon glows orange and gold. The light bounces between the smooth walls until you can't quite tell where it's coming from. The Navajo call this place Hazdistazí — “spiral rock arches” — and that's exactly what flash floods have been carving here for five or six million years. Every time water roars through this slot, it polishes the sandstone a little smoother, deepens the spirals a little more.
The colours shift as you move: burnt orange where the iron oxidizes, purple-grey in the shadows, sometimes a flash of cream or coral where the rock catches direct sun. There's a particular satisfaction in finding an angle that works, in this case looking up to frame the formation against the slot of blue sky above. The challenge is the dynamic range of deep shadow to bright sky, but that's part of what makes these canyons compelling for landscape photography.
Printed on Chromaluxe metal panels with a gloss white finish to bring out the rich contrast and make the oranges and purples dance, though satin or matte white are also available. Each print is scratch resistant, waterproof, and floats an inch off the wall.
For anyone who's ever stared at clouds long enough to find a face staring back.
