We’re here. It’s awesome: Simply indescribable. Defies expression or description. I’m not sure a picture is going to be a thousand words. It’s hard to determine which way to point a camera.We pulled in a few minutes before we were supposed to arrive. After a chat with the nice lady at the registration desk, we pulled into camping spot number 14. We had been a bit anxious about being preempted by a Rockefeller, Roosevelt, or Kennedy but the reservations office was true to its word. We had what Jane had been led to believe was the best camping spot on the North Rim. It is right on the rim of the canyon.

There was a young couple still in the spot when we arrived. They were still packing their equipment from a night of tent camping. I pulled in and parked while they finished packing. We couldn’t resist a walk along the rim. What a fantastic site. Our door faced the South Rim. That gave us beautiful light both for sunrise and for sunset. For those planning a visit to North Rim Campground, the campground layout can be viewed online. There are several sites much like number 14, at least four. Reservations must be made far in advance.

We completed camp setup, had lunch and selected a driving tour to Cape Royal Point and Hiking Trail. The drive is about 20 miles and the hike less than a mile. Every turn in the twisting road brought more ooohs and ahs. The drive was made much longer because we stopped at nearly every overlook and viewpoint.

One negative to the majestic scenery was a soft haze over the canyon. It eliminated the color from distant objects. I had remembered to pack a polarizing filter. It did reduce the haze but there was little that could be done to eliminate it. We’re not sure what was causing the haze, or if it is permanent. There were no burns in progress. It could be left from recent burns. I suspect it was coming from a coal-burning power generating station in Page. That wasn’t confirmed, however, and is a bit controversial for the intent of this post.

I later learned to use the Auto Levels function of Photoshop to make the haze more acceptable.

Grand Canyon Haze

What that did is cause a blue monochromatic effect behind the bright red sandstone cliffs and ridges in the foreground. It seemed to push the color forward, sort of “in your face.” Maybe not a perfect solution but I found the effect pleasing. It’ll have to do.

I imagined the canyon to be a model; a beautiful, very professional model, a super model. The canyon helped me make photographs. It seemed to say, “Look! I put that dead tree there for you. Use it as a foreground.” Or, “Hey, wait for the clouds. They cause a beautiful dappled effect.” Taking a bad image is difficult but I did manage to delete about half of the hundreds I was taking each day. I’ll have to eliminate a few more. I’m running out of disk space.  

Exposure caused some difficulty. Usually, I set the aperture and let the meter choose the shutter speed. That wasn’t working with the dark, saturated colors in the canyon and high values of the clouds in the sky. Getting the darker colors to match exposures with the clouds and sky required a gradated neutral density filter. Fortunately, I had bought one just before leaving on this trip. It has come in handy. But, the ND filter doesn’t do much for eliminating haze. The polarizing filter got most of the work. I changed to Manual Exposure to handle the over-exposed skies and brought the shadow values up with Photoshop.

Note: It is not possible to recover clipped (over exposed) highlight detail. On my Nikon, I set the review mode to “highlights” to see any clipping. It will blink black. In digital, always expose for the highlights and process for the shadows. Just the reverse of the good old days.

I thought of stacking filters but was shooting a lot of wide angle and stacking caused too much vignetting. Besides, rotating a polarizing filter and keeping a rotating gradated filter in sync is a huge pain.

We were flabbergasted after our drive to Cape Royal Point. We included a three-mile jaunt to Point Imperial, the highest viewpoint in the park. It was a day of great memories. We were exhausted after the drive, more from the excitement than the short hikes we took. I did manage to transfer pictures to the computer before quiet time. You are allowed to run a generator from 7-9 in the morning and 6-8 at night. I may not have mentioned that there are no hookups. We’re boon docking. There is a dump station for dumping the sewage and fresh water to fill the water tank. We’ll dump on the way out. And, I do have access to WiFi at the General Store. The coffee there is pretty good too.

We’ve just returned from another exhausting day of fun. I’ll save more excitement for another post. It is just getting better everyday.

L8r

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