We drove to an overlook area on the North Rim for sunrise photos the first morning of our visit. The sky was overcast and the canyon air was hazy. The overcast resulted in intermittent sunrise light. I struggled with how to best present my photo sequences. Should I group them by compositional variations from one spot and show how the light varied from one photo to another, or present them in chronological order. After playing with various scenarios, I decided that chronological order would be the simplest method.
I began taking photos before the sun rose and continued for awhile after sunrise at this first stop of the morning.
The canyon was dark in this pre-sunrise image and I excluded all of the nearby foreground, which from this vantage point consisted mostly of the overhanging rock on the edge of the canyon overlook.
As I alluded to in the previous post, getting interesting foreground in the canyon images was problematic. I had to experiment much with the foreground objects that were available.
Pivoting to my right, I included part of the rocky ledge overhang just in front of the overlook. I have mixed feeling about using this foreground and how much to include, so I experimented with compositional variations with the rock ledge as foreground.
I moved to the far right side of the overlook for this next image, including some of the rocky overhang in the foreground and part of the rock layer a few feet below the rim.
Moving around a bit more on the far right of the overlook area, I included a small tree in the left foreground.
Moving back to the left front of the overlook, I included more of the rock ledge in the image above.
Then moving to the right a little, I’ve included the end most part of the overhanging rock ledge with a gap between portions of the ledge. I think this might work a little better, but it still looks like these foreground objects are more of a distraction than an interesting part of the photos.
Finally, the very end part of the rock ledge in the foreground.
I think by now it is clear how I struggled with the foreground objects here and the compositional variations are limited at such overlooks. I’m not highly pleased with any of these images, but these do look much better on a large screen.
The sunrise light was still mostly muted in these images. The next part will have some break through sunrise light bringing out more of the features and colors in the canyon rock layers.
Until next time,
Ken