In the summer of '07 we visited the National Parks area in Utah and Arizona.  I shot over 2,500 photos, kept about 1,200; the ones below are my favorites.

The first set is of the Narrows canyon in Zion National Park.  This is a great experience -- you hike through the water using rubber boots and large walking sticks.  The sides of the canyon can be 2,000 feet high.   Look closely at the photo on the right and you can see people in the middle of the photo -- that shows you how high the walls are.

This last set is from another very cool place -- Antelope Canyon, just outside of Wahweap, AZ, near Lake Powell.  It's a "slot canyon" which means it's very narrow -- in some places less than 4 feet wide.  The light shines in through openings in top, creating wonderful shafts of light rays.  You need to be there a the right time of day to capture them; this is one of the few places where shooting at noon is actually the best time of day.  During our shoot our guide would often throw dust and sand in the area to better reveal the light rays.

Because of the long time exposures required here, I also experimented with flash lights and falling sand.

This place was a photographer's dream...but it was pretty tricky to get the exposures correct and shoot among all the (other) tourists.   Some of these photos had people in them -- but they're gone, thanks to the magic of Photoshop!  :)

Last:  a picture of Lake Powell

This next set is from Bryce Canyon -- a truly amazing place.  And yes, the rock really is this color!

The cool thing about this next photo is that it was shot at night -- about 11 pm.  The canyon was mostly dark, lit only by some moonlight.  But a 20 minute exposure will make it seem light daylight!  You can tell it's night time if you look closely at the sky -- see those curved lines?  Those are the stars "moving" from the rotation of the earth.

And now a truly remarkable place, one of nature's miracles.  It's called The Wave, and not very many people have ever seen it: You must get a permit from the state to hike there, and the state only issues 20 permits a day.  It's a  six mile + round trip hike on unmarked trails with no facilities or assistance.  We only saw three other people the entire time we were there -- if you had a problem or needed help, forget it. There's no one around!

First, take a look at the kind of geography we saw on the hike...

And now The Wave -- this rock has been carved by wind over the years.  Amazing

Because of the wide range of lighting in these scenes -- very bright light and very dark shadows -- most of these photos were shot in RAW, processed twice (once for the highlights and once for the shadows) and blended in Photoshop.  I did not use the HDR feature; i did it myself with layer masks, etc.