Mouth of the Canyon

It was a few minutes shy of 9am on a cool and partly cloudy November morning in Death Valley National Park. I was maybe a 2-minute walk from where I parked at the trailhead.

This was my first photograph of the day. I made it about 5 minutes before the photograph in my previous post titled Deception. This is the entrance to the slot canyon that I came to explore and photograph.

I must admit that I was caught completely off guard by all the magnificent color on display here. This was my first time exploring this canyon and I didn’t know what to expect. I had some ideas, but this was nowhere close to what I envisioned. At this time of the morning the light was still soft and even and this section of the canyon was still 100% in the shade. It really helped the colors pop and softened the textures. I used a wide-angle lens and got close to the foreground rock face in front of me. I worked out a more abstract composition that omitted the sky and included only the landscape. I wanted to create a photograph that was about the surprising colors and textures of the landscape.

Camera Settings:

F14, 1/60 SEC, ISO 250, Focal Length 26mm

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