Slot Canyon Photography

Hi everyone, I'm professional photographer, Ian Plant. And right now, I'm in a beautiful slot canyon that is deep within the wilderness of the Utah desert. I had quite an adventure getting here. First, I had a two-hour long, white-knuckle, four-wheel drive to get here. And then I had a four-mile hike. I had to cross a river. Until I finally got into this canyon. The great news is, is I've got the whole place entirely to myself. It's really just an amazing, beautiful place. And there's no one else here but me. This gives me a great opportunity to explore the canyon. To walk up and down. Waiting for the perfect light to make a magical slot canyon photograph. Usually the best light in a slot canyon occurs during the middle of the day. You wanna photograph slot canyons on sunny days. You don't want clouds in the sky. You want that bright, blue, sunny sky that tourists love. And the reason you want this, is that you end up getting this very strong sunlight on the rocks at the top of the canyon. And these rocks then glow in this light. And act like giant reflectors. And bounce that light deeper into the canyon. And that is where you get that magical orange-red canyon glow. Slot canyons are carved in sandstone, so there's a lot of striations. Lines and curves in the rocks that you can use as part of your compositions. I like working with my wide-angle lens because it allows me to bring in all of those compositional features. The striations, the lines, and the curves, and the sandstone. And bring those in as part of my overall visual design. Sometimes I even put on my fisheye lens. Which allows me to go even wider and adds some curvy goodness to the compositions. You typically want to avoid having any direct sunlight in your shots. Because that's gonna create too much contrast. And it's not gonna be very attractive. So I look for those parts of the canyon that are deep in shadow. So that there's no direct sunlight coming in. But still are getting a lot of that beautiful, reflected, bounce glow. It can be really dark. Especially if you're in a deep, narrow slot canyon. Even during that peak glow-light. So I often find that I prefer to bump up my ISO. I might increase my ISO to 200 or 400. That keeps my exposure times from being too long. Even at 200 or 400 ISO, I'll often end up with exposures that are several seconds long. By bumping my ISO up, I avoid those super long 15 or 30 second exposures. Which just eat up a lotta time. And you're much less efficient when you're trying to get some shots fast during that peak glow-light. What I like to do, is to explore the slot canyon. Walking up and down during the peak midday hours when the light's the strongest. And what I'm looking for is areas of the canyon that are kind of narrow. That have that really strong glow. And I point my camera in the direction of that strongest glow. Wow, this has been an amazing day. And an incredible photo adventure. I've had a great time, photographing this beautiful slot canyon in the remote wilderness of the Utah desert. But it looks like my peak glow-light is beginning to fade. So it's time for me to head outta here. I've got a long way to go. But I hope you've found this video useful. I'm Ian Plant, and thanks for watching.