A week from now I will be backpacking through Buckskin Gulch and Paria Canyon (Wire Pass to Lees Ferry) and I am asking you folks for some tips you might be willing to share for photographing slot canyons. I've never tried photographing in the slots before. I've seen some wonderful slot canyon photography, and some truly awful ones. I'm hoping to avoid ending up with all of my photos in the later category.
I understand that getting exposure right is one of the main technical challenges of slot canyon photography, and from my observation of slot photos I like, it is better to let a portion of the composition go black than to over-expose the sky (or more directly lit canyon walls). Choice of composition seems to be one of the main tools for dealing with the extreme range of "stops" possible in slot canyons. Is spot metering your main tool for calculating exposure in your compositions?
I also notice in the great slot photographs there is a lovely range of color, from blues in the shade to golds in the better-lit walls. How is such color achieved? In the not-so good photos I've seen, the shaded walls just appear gray and dull.
Thanks for any advice you can offer!
Stacy
Posted by Richard Wong on May 28, 2007 at 11:53 PM
I haven't been to a slot canyon myself but from what I understand midday is generally best because it is when the canyon will be most illuminated. I would probably spot meter the desired highlights on the canyon wall and open up a 1 stop to 1.5 stops, then let the rest fall wherever it may. Then tweak the contrast in Photoshop.
I think it varies by location, when the light is best, and it probably also changes according to the time of year - the only slot canyon I am familar with, Antelope, the light IS best at midday...
Exposure bracketing is your friend, if you want to capture the extremes. If you are working in digital, then various methods of compiling exposures, either through HDR or merely blending, will give you desired results.
I don't know what equipment you are using, but it is very helpful to have an eyepiece extender such as Canon's angle finder C. You will be backed up against the wall in tight places, or shooting up toward the light, and it can be impossible to frame the shot you want and still see through the viewfinder.
The better postprocessing deliberately chooses for the wanted colors, boosting with selective color saturation when the exposure does't bring out desired color.
A tripod and wide angle lens are useful.
Shoot RAW to get maximum flexibility in adjusting WB later.
Are you expecting deep water pools in Buckskin gulch?
I've only hiked a few hours in from Wire Pass, so I didn't get far enough to encounter them.
From descpritions (a few years old) there were deep pools that required a swin with drybags.
Thank you all for the tips so far! I will be bringing my Canon 20D with 17-40 lens, and a tripod. I was suspecting that bring out the colors in the walls is a post-processing issue. But I'm not sure what to do in PS to achieve this. Any advice?
We plan to talk to the ranger before we go regarding pools in Buckskin. I've read a trip report from one party's hike through Buckskin in early June, and there was no mention of pools, but lots of mud. I'm thinking due to a relatively dry winter there might not be as much standing water as there would be in the fall season, after a summer of monsoon rains.
I've only done a bit of it, but on each occasion I longed for a Light Disc to help bounce light into the deepest shadows. Never seem to remember to pack one though. A 24" model won't be too big in most situations, while consuming very little weight/space in your pack. BTW- I stripped off my white T-shirt and tried that last time. It was more difficult to manipulate than a disc, but good enough to convince me I was on the right track.
Sounds like you've already got a pretty good grasp on the technical parts of photographing the slots.
I've done Upper and Lower Antelope several times, using both film and digital. One thing you want to avoid is the sky. The other is direct sunlight (except for light shaft shots). Direct light on a slot canyon wall will record as featureless white on either film or digital.
The way I expose film for slot canyons is to spot meter on the brightest part of the composition in which I want to preserve color and detail and to set the meter at about +1 1/3 to +1 2/3. This worked great for me when using Velvia. That way, the very light color will stay very light without going white. This meathod controls the highlights and you just have to let the rest fall where it may. This same approach works well with digital too. (of course, with digital you can take several exposures and create an HDR image, though I find having too much detail in the shadow areas of slot images can often be a distraction--just some food for thought)
You may get very dark or black areas in your composition. The best way to deal with these is through composition (as you've observed above). In other words, use them as graphic elements. The best way I've found for doing this is to set your aperture to a small opening like 11, 16 or 22 and push your Depth of Field Preview button. With the preview button pressed, the darks will go dark but the bright areas will still be easily visible but without much detail, really just leaving you with the graphics of the composition.
Keep the preview button depressed and move the camera around until you get a graphic composition that feels right to you. (for more on using the preview button, see my NPN article)
You should be getting pretty great colors without having to do much of anything in post processing. Using auto white balance will help to warm the colors, I suspect, since you're really photographing in the shade of a deep canyon. At least that's the experience I've had. You could set white balance to daylight and achieve color results similar to daylight balanced slide film.
But if you want or need to tweak the colors a bit, first try changing the white balance and saturation in the RAW converter. You can also try using a Hue/Sat adjustment layer in Photoshop. You can play with the saturation or, if you feel the colors are off a bit, try changing hue in the reds. It's really easy to over do this though
Those great blues and purples you see on the walls are, I think, a result of blue sky being the light source. That is, the walls are beneath open blue sky, basically a shady condition. Blue sky reflecting off of red rock makes for some interesting colors. (Auto white balance could "correct" this, eliminating the very colors you're after) I'm guessing that those shots you've seen with dull grey walls were either made on an overcast day or in a portion of the canyon that wasn't open to the blue sky (or were the victims of auto white balance gone bad).
Well, that's all I can think of right now. Be sure to bring along a small garbage bag or a large zip-lock to put over your camera in case the dust starts falling.
And have fun, those slots are amazing.
I don't know how slotty that canyon is, but I was really glad to have a zip-lock to cover my camera in Upper Antelope. There was a constant shower of grit from above...and from yabagas throwing sand from the canyon floor to better define the light beams for other photographers.
Discussion
8 repliesI understand that getting exposure right is one of the main technical challenges of slot canyon photography, and from my observation of slot photos I like, it is better to let a portion of the composition go black than to over-expose the sky (or more directly lit canyon walls). Choice of composition seems to be one of the main tools for dealing with the extreme range of "stops" possible in slot canyons. Is spot metering your main tool for calculating exposure in your compositions?
I also notice in the great slot photographs there is a lovely range of color, from blues in the shade to golds in the better-lit walls. How is such color achieved? In the not-so good photos I've seen, the shaded walls just appear gray and dull.
Thanks for any advice you can offer!
Stacy
Exposure bracketing is your friend, if you want to capture the extremes. If you are working in digital, then various methods of compiling exposures, either through HDR or merely blending, will give you desired results.
I don't know what equipment you are using, but it is very helpful to have an eyepiece extender such as Canon's angle finder C. You will be backed up against the wall in tight places, or shooting up toward the light, and it can be impossible to frame the shot you want and still see through the viewfinder.
The better postprocessing deliberately chooses for the wanted colors, boosting with selective color saturation when the exposure does't bring out desired color.
Have fun! Shoot wide!
Shoot RAW to get maximum flexibility in adjusting WB later.
Are you expecting deep water pools in Buckskin gulch?
I've only hiked a few hours in from Wire Pass, so I didn't get far enough to encounter them.
From descpritions (a few years old) there were deep pools that required a swin with drybags.
Pro 1: ISO 100, F8 @ 2 seconds
Pro 2: ISO 100, F11@ 5-8 seconds
And then exposure bracketing as insurance for blending if desired.
We plan to talk to the ranger before we go regarding pools in Buckskin. I've read a trip report from one party's hike through Buckskin in early June, and there was no mention of pools, but lots of mud. I'm thinking due to a relatively dry winter there might not be as much standing water as there would be in the fall season, after a summer of monsoon rains.
Sounds like you've already got a pretty good grasp on the technical parts of photographing the slots.
I've done Upper and Lower Antelope several times, using both film and digital. One thing you want to avoid is the sky. The other is direct sunlight (except for light shaft shots). Direct light on a slot canyon wall will record as featureless white on either film or digital.
The way I expose film for slot canyons is to spot meter on the brightest part of the composition in which I want to preserve color and detail and to set the meter at about +1 1/3 to +1 2/3. This worked great for me when using Velvia. That way, the very light color will stay very light without going white. This meathod controls the highlights and you just have to let the rest fall where it may. This same approach works well with digital too. (of course, with digital you can take several exposures and create an HDR image, though I find having too much detail in the shadow areas of slot images can often be a distraction--just some food for thought)
You may get very dark or black areas in your composition. The best way to deal with these is through composition (as you've observed above). In other words, use them as graphic elements. The best way I've found for doing this is to set your aperture to a small opening like 11, 16 or 22 and push your Depth of Field Preview button. With the preview button pressed, the darks will go dark but the bright areas will still be easily visible but without much detail, really just leaving you with the graphics of the composition.
Keep the preview button depressed and move the camera around until you get a graphic composition that feels right to you. (for more on using the preview button, see my NPN article)
You should be getting pretty great colors without having to do much of anything in post processing. Using auto white balance will help to warm the colors, I suspect, since you're really photographing in the shade of a deep canyon. At least that's the experience I've had. You could set white balance to daylight and achieve color results similar to daylight balanced slide film.
But if you want or need to tweak the colors a bit, first try changing the white balance and saturation in the RAW converter. You can also try using a Hue/Sat adjustment layer in Photoshop. You can play with the saturation or, if you feel the colors are off a bit, try changing hue in the reds. It's really easy to over do this though
Those great blues and purples you see on the walls are, I think, a result of blue sky being the light source. That is, the walls are beneath open blue sky, basically a shady condition. Blue sky reflecting off of red rock makes for some interesting colors. (Auto white balance could "correct" this, eliminating the very colors you're after) I'm guessing that those shots you've seen with dull grey walls were either made on an overcast day or in a portion of the canyon that wasn't open to the blue sky (or were the victims of auto white balance gone bad).
Well, that's all I can think of right now. Be sure to bring along a small garbage bag or a large zip-lock to put over your camera in case the dust starts falling.
And have fun, those slots are amazing.
Pete D.