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Place Where Light Flows Through Rocks

Water flowed through here to carve this canyon, but light flows in and changes the way that we see it. The sun's light is made up of all the colors of the rainbow, but a clear sky scatters blue light, making it appear blue.

The human perceptual system handles the changing light conditions by trying to assign the brightest light to white, coloring our perception of everything else around us. Further complicating the situation, we have only limited capacity to notice and remember color. What color is snow? Everyone knows that it's white. Yet if you look at it on a clear day and pay close attention, it's often a blue-white. When you notice that the light in the shadows on snow are very blue from blue sky light, it becomes apparent that you can see something like snow your whole life, yet never fully notice or comprehend its true color.

Can you photograph something well if you are not accustomed to fully seeing it? Even if your camera captures it faithfully, you might get home and "correct" the color out.

People often ask the camera that was used, or the exposure settings, but those can literally vary by the minute, so knowing them for someone else's situation will not help you in yours. Often what's most important to know are not answers, but rather the right questions to ask.

#antelopecanyon #southwest #landscapephotography
www.JeffSullivanPhotography.com

 
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28 thoughts on “Place Where Light Flows Through Rocks”

  4. Mark Seibold
    Reply

    Jeff – this is a very interesting image that you created. It appears very similar to an image that was all over the web last winter, of a desert southwest cave, and a shaft of 'blue light' coming down from an opening to the sky above. I believe the caption said, that the photo commanded a million dollar sale. Did you see this story?

    I also appreciated and related closely to what you described about light properties and conditions as I have been making time exposure photographs of the night sky since I was 14 with my first self purchased telescope, and strapped my parents Kodak Box camera to it, manually guiding the telescope for say, up to several minutes, but only using Black & White Kodak Tri-x film back then on 1967. Later at age 18, while starting college then, I purchased and used a new 35mm Mamiya/Sekor 1000DTL to take over a thousand slide transparencies, Kodachromes, etc. I still have that original camera and all the transparencies
    I now attach the old Mamiya 55mm f/1.8 lens to my latest Sony NEX5 digital, to photograph the night skies celestial objects.

  17. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    +Shantanu Shinde Sadly, I can't continue to take these photos if their value becomes zero, since my gear, travel, vehicle, food and other living expenses aren't free. It can cost $1000 or more for the top photos of the year, if you consider all of the costs. I suggested years ago that +Google enable people to license G+ photos for wall paper for a small fee, like songs on +Google Play. In my opinion, photographers deserve the same respect, protection and opportunity that musical artists have.

    Fortunately there is a site +500px which supports photographers like that. If there are specific photos that you like, let me know and I can probably upload them to my +500px Prime account for you:
    http://500px.com/JeffSullivan

  20. Jeff Sullivan
    Reply

    +Mark Seibold It's the same place. I think that it cost me under $40 to take my own photo there, and there are probably 200 people in the canyon at any given time, over 1000 people who go through each day.

    Take the reported high dollar sales of photographs with a grain of salt. No one knows who is buying them, so it's hard to know what the story is.

    _"Skeptics have speculated that the sale is nothing more than a marketing tactic, and the photo has drawn some less than charitable commentary"
    http://www.dpreview.com/articles/4546292607/peter-lik-s-phantom-photograph-breaks-world-record-with-6-p-5-million-sale
    The Most Expensive Photo in the World, or the Best Marketing Stunt?
    http://petapixel.com/2014/12/10/expensive-photo-world-best-marketing-stunt/

  21. writingsinthesky
    Reply

    Here you truly describe the scene with a painters or artists eye. Your photographs are like what the impressionists saw. They painted what no one else knew was there. And your photographs reflect that painters eye. Lovely work.

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