By the TIme I get to Arizona (Part III)

Day three started off early. I wanted to get up and get breakfast and then find myself to Navajo reservation as soon as could. Early though was at 8am and a 20 minute drive around Page Arizona and not finding any place open to eat. Ugh, I did find a convenience store open and ate shit I shouldn't be eating and picked up some water for day in the desert.

I headed south and then east passing the boarder and into the Navajo nation. To the dead east was a huge coal-electric station, that belted out large gapes of gray and black gas and polluted the skyline. I found my off ramp which was just to the west of this place and settled down into small car-line of sorts waiting at the gates to get into the parking lot. The wait was about 30 minutes and few more cars settled in behind me, or tried to double up next to already formed line in hopes of cutting thier way in so to say. To enter the Navajo land or nation you had to pay a fee. Once in you then had to pay one of 4 outifts that licensed to take tours of the various slot canyons found within the Navajo nation. I had already booked a time and tour of the lower antelope canyons and paid extra so I could get the photographer special so to say.

all of the canyons in question are sandstone rock that has been cut and warn by about a 1000 years of flash floods and erosion. The sandstone also has a lot of glazed clay to it, giving it a strong red-orange color, mixed with ambient lighting that filters down to the bottom of these canyons is kind of a once in a life time site that you'll not find any place else.

In all honesty, this part of the trip was one of the two reasons for taking this trip. I had seen over the last few years that a few friends of mine had visited these canyons and wanted to visit them as well, so in the weeks prior and I scoured what trips could be made and centered this trip so I could visit at least 2 canyons while on this trip. For this trip I'd visit the both the lower and upper antelope canyons. Most people I know had visited the upper canyons, the lower canyon from what I could tell would have far less people on it and I wanted to take as many photos I could. So I had booked a photographer special (2 hours vs the normal 1 hour) for both canyons and set up the lower canyon as first tour of the day. Lucky for me, I was the only one to book the photographer special for that time and day so I had about half the canyon to myself and guide for the first hour

My tour guide was 18 your old kid from the Navajo nation named Josh. I have to say that this kid had the world by his balls. What mean by that was he uber friendly, way too talkitive and really out to explore the world around him. He was chatty the entire tour. We actually started at the end of the canyon and then made our way towards the start where the normal tours started. This way we had the canyon to ourselves. I was amused at by all the photo talk he gave me about the canyon and what to shoot, mostly telling me hor to ge the best color in all my shots. I had actually brought along two camera's for this morning, the first being my Leica M7 loaded with Plus-X B&W films on my tripod. Around my neck was my Leica m240 digital camera and in the bag was assortment of several wide angle prime lenses to capture the morning's work.

As you can see from the photos that I've littered here on this blog posting, my interest in shooting in this canyon had a lot more to do with light, darkness and texture found within the canyon and not so much about color and content. In total, I shot about 400 digital picture and full roll and half of B&W photos over a 2 hour period. Many of them at first glance look and felt the same, so I had to spend a lot of time first choosing the right photos from among-st my work and then some time in post production making them stand out from hundreds of others. At this time, I've only developed the lower antelope photos, so all those found here are from that canyon at this time. Anyway, as we started to meet up with the normal tours, josh then found time to flirt and jump into every selfie being taken within the canyon. I have to say I was amused as hell at his energy and gumption.

Anyway, at the end of tour, I tipped him well knowing that he was stuck with me as his only customer for the morning sojourn and headed back into Page Arizona for lunch. As I had a second tour lined up for mid afternoon, I drove around the town after lunch to get a better idea of surroundings, as I drove by the local highschool a cop uturned and stared to follow me. 2-3 minutes later I was being pulled over speeding. It seems that while at the bottom of the hill that the speed limit was 45, they hid a second sign for 30mph half way up the hill and nailed me for going 10 miles over the speed limit. Great, so the trip was going to cost me another $200. Oh well, but I did make my way back to the Navajo nation and found that my second tour hadn't been set up right. While I had signed up for a tour, they had no record of me having signed up a photographer tour that afternoon. In all honesty I was kind of glad as earlier tour had really taken a lot of photo-ness and I had put the M7 away for the second tour (I really didn't want to lug a tripod around again is what it really came down too). So I ended up doing one of the last (normal) tours of the Upper Antelope Canyons that day.

I ended up in the back of a 4 wheel drive pick up truck with 5 german tourests for a 10 minute drive up the canyon to the Upper Antelope slot canyon. This was in effect the main canyon to tour as it was twice as deep and wide as the lower canyon is. What that means was more ambient light and greater vaulted (deep walls) height and even more tourists as whole. I was glad to have done this tour, but the place was packed people and moving around and getting shots of the place wasn't easy. If Could have toured the place by myself, then it would have hands down beaten the lower canyon too, but with large number of folks touring it kind of diminished things for me. Also, once you were done with the canyon, you had to slip back threw it to get to your waiting 4 wheeld drive pick up truck to get back to your car, so I have to say, I really enjoyed the lower canyon more then I did the upper canyon, but was glad to have done both. After getting back, I was then in need of a doing a 5ish hour drive back to Phoenix for the night

By the Time I get to Arizona . . . (part 2)

So, I didn't get out of Sedona till quite a bit later then thought I would and didn't make it to Flagstaff till about 11pm. I had booked a place according to Epedia based on location and price. Well, right after my shower I found I had booked wrong motel of sorts. I could hear the fun being had in the room next to mine with bed slamming against the wall. As you an tell, I didn't end up with the best night's sleep as the fun times went stereo at 6am. Anyway, it was good invitation to get on the road early at least. I had another 2 hours of driving to hit the main part of the Grand Canyon to do and didn't want to deal with crowds if I could help it. None the less it took about 20 minutes to get past the gate even that early in the morning (and off season). I promptly got lost in Grand Canyon Village for the next 30 minutes too. The roads and signage were less then stellar to say the least. The build up of village was odd too. Anyway, I finally broke down and sat tight for about 20 minutes while pured over maps to figure out what I wanted to do. I ended up doing one of the most done hikes you can do in the Grand Canyon. So ya, it actually took me about an hour to find the stupid canyon . . .

As you can tell, visiting the grand canyon itself wasn't really on the top of my agenda for this trip. But my main thoughts for visiting were of course, I had never visited it (other then in photos) and it was on the way to one of those places I had really wanted to go to (see part III). Part of my blah atitude for visiting the canyon was I knew I could really only visit for a day at best and I'd be hitting the most touristy part of too. I was happy though I wasn't hitting it in August (as it would bee too fucking hot, hazy and filled with even more tourest)and Iknew I'd kick myself if I had just blown it off too.

So, I did the Rim/Hermit trail hike. Basically you start at the Bright Angle lodge in the Village and follow the rim of the Grand Canyon till you hit Hermit's Rest. It's about 5.5 miles and fairly flat hike. Dumb me didn't pack much in the way of water though, but I still easily did the walk with two camera's in tow. While the breath of the canyon is really something to see, their was also a mild haze, which made for less then stellar photography. Then add that I was doing this walk during the mid day, meant less then stellar lighting too. That having been said, I oddly enjoined the company I kept running into while on the trail. I rarely head English spoken, with a lot of French, German what I think was Brazilian being spoken with smidgen of Chinese and Spanish along the way. I've oddly come to like hearing non-english being spoken when I explore. The hike took me to most of the same well worn landmarks you'd see along this part of the canyon too. At the end I opted to take the bus back, which was it's own short story. I headed directly to the back of the bus, not really wanted to deal with where some had thrown up seat on the trip to Hermit's rest for obvious reasons. AS we traveled back, the bus quickly began to fill up too. At one point a muslim family boarded and the husband in the group couldn't sit with his kids and wife, so he ended up at the rear of the bus with me. At the next stop a large load of Merkians boarded and none of them would sit next to him. And older couple quickly settled next to me as I had my Powells books tshirt on and they were from the Pacific Northwest and we settled into Portland talk pretty quickly. But despite the crowding, this poor guy was being ignored for, well, for obvious reasons so to say. I can't really stand this type of behavior where everyone isn't being obviously racists, but in fact is being racist. It's stupid as fuck. None of this is generally helped by me as I tend to be anti social and not very chatty with complete strangers to start with. So as we approached the village I leaned out and asked him how he and his family were enjoying their trip. The depressed look on his face immediately did a 180 at this point and he told us he and his family were enjoying their stay in Northern Arizona. the older couple kind of took it from there and added into the conversation at that point. What amused me the most I hate to say was that the guy and his family were native born US citizens and from Indianpolis. The Indianaplis part actually made me laugh, as it surpassed the older couple quite a bit. That just about made my day.

Lunch back in the village was pretty uneventful and as I knew I needed to hit the road again I was back on the road following the canyon rim. I stopped from time to time to snap a few pictures and even took a 30 minute hike out one of outcrops to try and get a shot of the breath of the canyon. The hike was nice, but shots I got were blah. Oh well. I did end up stopping at last fire look out and hiked around as the magic hour hit. I think I got my best shots here of the canyon, but I still had about 2 hours of driving and didn't want to be as late as I had been the day before, so as soon as I could, I was back on the road again.

By the Time I get to Arizona . . . (part 1)

Friday, to say the least was hectic, and probably most productive day of my flash bamb vacation before starting a new job at UC Berkeley. Oh if you hadn't heard I'm now working at UC Berkeley school of environmental design as their new AV manager. Anyway, since I haven't really taken a vacation ages, and since it would be at least a year before I had any real vacation a-crewed, it was high time to get the hell out of Berkeley for a few days.

Anyway, Friday started for me at 4am, yep 4am. I was up and on my way to Oakland airport via bart for a 5;30am flight. My train was maybe 15 minutes late too. Thanks BART. The Oakland airport at 5am was little used, so my flight to LA was uneventful. Actually I had 3 seats to myself on the first flight, that was awesome. I can't actually remember the last time I had even a free seat next to me! The layover at LAX was equally uneventful and the flight too was in that direction. My flight would finish off at Phoenix, where I had spied video tripod on craiglist while I was in LAX, so I 15 drive later and I had scored a very nice (but used) Monfrotto tripod. After that was to be a leserly drive north with scheduled stops on my way to Flagstaff for the night. But my in car map program kind of failed me. Originally I was head to Sedona for a hour long hike. Then stops at some early native American sites. instead the GPS map failed to direct me to Sedona and I noticed some signage for the last of the 3 native American sites. Ugh. So this part of the trip was actually done in reverse, with a stop at Montazuma's well, followed by Montazuma's Castle and then Tizigoot. All were nice, but Castle access was less then stellar I hate to say. Tizigoot was best the best of three to explore and shoot too.

Montazum's well - natural well of soft that feeds into the local river and kept early native americans with water when the river rand dry

Montazuma's Castle - this whole area actually was filled with settlements, but this is the best known one and handled by the national park service. Up until the 60's you could climb up into the rock homes and explore.

Tizigoot- another settlement for central Arizona and one you can actually enter and see.

After this it was an hour drive into the hills to Sedona to see Cathedral rock. Once I hit the town I had a bit of traffic and some absolutely wild shots of the mounts/hills around the town as magic hour approached and lots of fluffy little dramatic clouds I wanted to shoot. Fuck me, I wish I could have spent a week alone in and around Sedona just to hike and photograph. Anyway, I did make to Cathedral rock, just magic hour was hitting I quickly grabbed my cameras and a tripod and hit the 2 mile straight up the hill hike with minor rock climbing to boot. I have to say this was well worth the hike, even in partial dark, as the summet plus magic hour lighting on all the red rocks, epic clouds and skyline made for the most fantiascitly easy shoots of my life. Really I couldn't aim the camera's anywhere without a great photo coming out of it. The walk back down in the dark was something else too. Just ask my back!

The hike ahead up Cathedral rock

About to summet

At the Summet

The view when coming back down in near darkness

After putting my camera equipment away, it was dinner in Sedona and then 2 hour drive to Flagstaff for the night. The next day of the trip would take me to the Grand Canyon. (more to come)