Slot Canyons - Learning to shoot in Canyons

 

Slot canyons start as cracks on the surface of grounds that over several million years of time gets deeper and wider with water and the soft sand stone and lime gets eroded, leaving behind 2 feet to 20 feet wide and 30 to 100 feet deep 'slot-life' fissures in the ground. Our visit to this wonderful place have kept the images and experience etched in our hearts.

Here are couple of things we picked up, from our own experiences and other wonderful and useful sites on how to make the most of this wonderful place for your photography pleasure.

 

Choosing my slot: Utah, USA has one of the largest concentration of slot canyons. Some of the easily accessible canyons are in Arizona close to Page. While, one can go to Upper Canyons (antelope) and Lower Canyons, I refer to primarily "Secret Canyon", which due to being pricey gets less of customers - but has a whole lot of things to offer, way beyond Upper and Lower Canyon. You would need to book with Hummer Adventure world for these tours, a great set of folks - very professional and will make your trip something to remember for. However, the tips and tricks discussed in this article are relevant for all slot canyons. Secret Canyon can only be reached though Hummer Adventure folks, close to Page. Take the normal tour (1.5-2.0 hrs) or photographic tour (3.5-4.0 hrs). Hummer fun drive is around 30 mnts, followed by 200 yrds of trek into the canyon. The upper canyon are much easily accessible by transport organised by tour company and a short hike. The lower canyon is a bit more strenuous, when inside with steep ladders and some hops to access all areas. Upper and Lower canyon can have around 20-100 tourists at one time, while the secret canyon folks allow on 20 at max (our trip was unique, we had the entire canyon for ourselves - a small family of 4) Whichever slot you choose, rest assured it will be fun.

Ride to slot canyon

Time of the day: You can go any part of the year and you would be greeted with nice views. For the specific time of the day, for once you should not look for Golden hour or the blue hour, but plan around noon time. We were lucky to get the 10:30 am slot, that ensured we get sun on both sides of canyon. The secret canyon runs north south for most part. Pre-noon, we got the sun on one side - which was different than the way back, where we got the sun on the other - completely changed the complexion of the canyon.

Entrance to Secret Canyon - looking back from the canyon

Basic human needs: You are normally not allowed to take any eatables, there are no rest-rooms in/near the canyons. Feed yourself well, before leaving. Take lots of water, the weather is dry. Remain within the canyon and with the guide. It is VERY EASY to be lost outside the canyon, even though your vehicle is just 200yrds, from the canyon entrance. The guide carries a bottle for you, but you would need more.

The gear: 

1. Memory: In our 4 hour duration of visit, we shot around 1000 (973 to be precise, for me) shots each. Many of them, in RAW to ensure flexibility in post-processing. Take extra memory - we had 16GB + 32 GB in one camera and 32GB in another. We used up almost 16gb in each. 

2. Capture Light: Trying to capture light has never been easy for any photographer. We hunted for a Home Party fog machine, that would make our life easier inside the canyon, but alas we could not find anything portable or close by. We were hunting for a device like this. 
3. Lens/Camera protection: Anyways, we then focused our attention to managing dust. Dust inside the canyon is very high, you would need to keep your lens/heads protected. Do not plan to change lenses inside the canyon. Small pieces of bandana came in handy, along with some clean cloth. For the cameras itself, we used Rain 
   
   protection thingy, something like this . We were glad we used it atleast our camera. By the time we were done, (on the camera that did not have this protection) we had the lens movement mechanism making weird sounds on focus movement. (Which was later fixed by thorough cleaning.)
4. Tripod: Lights being very low in the canyon, you would need to shoot for slow shutters. Shutter speeds easily touch 2 seconds to 1/40 seconds. You would need a tripod. Another reason, you need a tripod is to reach vantage view points, which you would not be able to reach on your own.
5. Lens: Most kit lens with the cameras would be more than sufficient for your needs. You would shoot at focal lengths of 11mm to 30mm. So getting a ultra wide angle lens would be helpful.
6. Camera: Mobile phones, Point and shoot, DSLR - get ALL OF THEM. DSLR owners would benefit, considering the need for control on white balance, shutter speed, iso control. But nothing stops normal point and shoot cameras for a great photo-walk
7. Flash: No No, strict no no. No way, you can catch the warmth of the walls with a flash. Leave it home. Learn to switch off the in-built flash.
8. Battery: Please, please charge your camera battery the previous night. Carry a spare battery - MUST - to the trip. It is very depressing to see the red colored half empty battery life.

 

Camera Settings

Each of us prefer our own setting points in the camera and it the finer qualities will depend on your own control, so there is not much that you need to do in terms of setting except the following

1. Bracketing: Most of the frames required f/stops greater than what the digital cameras can deliver. Using WB brackets will give you ability to HDR or manually over-lay the images for correct exposures.
2. Focus: Leave it on auto-focus. Make sure, you hyper-focal is somewhere at the center of your image, so that the images can get maximal depth.
3. Aperture: Normally, you would be tempted to shoot wide open, but then you loose the DoF, so try to keep it between f/6-f/12.
4. ISO: Crank it up to as high as your camera can sustain, without introducing noise. Remember, the lights will be low, and higher ISO can help. Even though, D7000 is known for its excellent control of noise at higher ISO, I purposefully set it at ISO 100. No noise for me please.
5. RAW or fine: Primarily keep it in raw, the dark images and the warm tones require significant post-processing depth. I chose to do most of my shots in RAW.
6. White balance: One of the best kept secrets about the Slot canyons is that they emit reddish tinge on the rock surface - however, most of the photographers, keep the WB to very warm. I choose, to directly manage the temperature rather than pick any readymade scene. Most of the images seen have been shot upwards of 7000k temperature and many even at 8200k. The reddish warm glow is simply mesmerising
7. Shutter speed: Go as high as  your camera permits - assuming no flash, low iso, mid-way aperture. You would normally play between 3-4 seconds to 1/30s. Hence please use tripods or mono-pods, when you go below 1/100. These are just indicatives, I know folks who can extract razor sharp images, hand-held at 1/10s. so your mileage may wary.

Composition/framing.

1. Lie down, now stand up, now sit down. Yes, the canyon will appear completely different, the colors completely varied in all these places. I had fun shooing many shots 6" above the ground level and then completely removing the ground.
2. Avoid the sky: The first thumb rule of shooting in slot canyon is to avoid the sky, as much as possible - unless you have an analogue camera capable of several f/stops. You would be better off, to not give in to temptation and keep that blue sky out of the image - why ? because that small thin light will cause silhouetting and ruin any chances of warm images.
3. Frame Play: Don't worry about the frame composition always, play with them. Many of the shots of the canyon end up as abstracts - so don't limit yourself to good frames only, play with as much frame variety as possible
4. Avoid direct sun lit spots: It will always be better to not shoot at places, where the light is directly falling, but in the reflection of the sunlight, this gives you a better chance to catch the purple and blue tinges later.
5. Make dust your friend. : Dust (along with Water drop, Snow and sand) are one of the worst enemies of your camera. Give them, this once liberty and make dust your friend. Where you see dust, you would have the opportunity of capturing light ray. So go ahead, tell your friends to throw dust off the wall..... and click.
6. Post processing: Please do not under-estimate the power of post processing, specially in the slot canyons and specially in raw images. Use a good software to manage your pics. Having said that all images presented in this article have only undergone curve, saturation and crop adjustments.

The temperatures in the canyon are easily 10-12 degrees Fahrenheit (4-5 degrees Celsius) lower than outside, so it iindeed very pleasant. It is quite (as was for us) and it is an unique experience to quitely sit for 10-15 minutes and simply absorb the nature. The place is surreal, peaceful and quite simple out of this world.

Whatever, you read here, I can assure you - a trip to the slot canyons is an experience that you will remember for a very very long time.

Click here, to see some of the images shot at this secret canyon.

Alok Sinha