Grand Canyon Sunset

I couldn’t make it to the Grand Canyon from the Page, Arizona area the night before; I had to pull over at a “truck safety” turnout, apparently a resta rea without restrooms. Fortunately someone pulled up behnind me at something like 4am, shining their headlights to fill the van with light. I bolted upright, thinking that I had slept in. No such luck.

I did notice however that I might be able to make it to the Grand Canyon in time for sunrise. A couple of hours later I was racing the rising sun to the turnouts and viewpoints along the Canyon rim. The clouds started to show some nice red color before I made it to one of the better views, but I hopped out and snapped a few shots because I knew I’d most likely lose the light befoer the next stop.

At the next stop I noticed that my camera was telling me that I ahd no CompactFlash installed. It had been happily pretending to capture images, even displaying them on the back LCD like everything was normal. Apparently it saw how excited I was and didn’t want to ruin the moment to break any bad news to me. What a nice “feature”! Thank you, Canon!

Anyway, I had a couple of minutes with the last glimpse of color, then there was literally seconds where the sun broke through and lit the canyon. I think this was captured during the last few moments of that light.

That pattern played out several times during the day. You saw a great shot, and If you didn’t act immediately, it was gone. Forget setting up a tripod or changing lenses. You had to be anticipating where the moving light would hit next, and have a long lnes ready to grab the moment when it happened.