Lone Juniper

As marvelous as Grand Canyon is, it's very tough to shoot as a photographer.

When i visited the Canyon in 2008 i had a particular photography mindset that came from closely following peculiar styles of some photographers..

I've now realized that while that may not be a necessarily a bad idea in the beginning's of a photographer, it certainly hampers the progress as one is constrained to some notions. Gradually over the last year or two my perspective has changed quite a bit on what and how I shoot.

This has mostly to do with compositional choices and what goes in a photo or not. I was getting too constrained with the idea of having a great foreground elements to stack up my shots and it simply does not work in all the situations. Since then I have been trying to let go of everything i first learned about composition when i started shooting and 'go-with-the-flow'. Composition rules are good, but they only take you so far.

^Rant over^ So coming back, I found shooting the Canyon was tough because i was searching for good foreground elements and with the Canyon there really isn't much of that.. at least not from the rim. If you do trek down to the Canyon floor things might be different, but having 2 little kids and being short on time didn't afford me that luxury.

This is a shot from our first and only evening at the Canyon from the South Rim. The sky was totally overcast for the most part till the very end when the sun managed to peek through the clouds just for a couple of minutes to light up these trees. Since orange and blue tones are complimentary colors i think they did work to light up this scene quite nicely.

Cheers!
Daman