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
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