Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
I’m fortunate to be able to return to Bryce Canyon National Park every October. It’s a wonderful time to be there. The air is clear and cold and the sun rising above the San Francisco peaks on the eastern horizon (the western boundary of Dinétah, the Navajo ancestral homeland given to them by the Holy People) is like the beginning of time itself.
Bryce Canyon sunrises are to be savored, every moment of them. Bryce Canyon is not a canyon but an enormous amphitheater that faces the rising sun. There is nothing between the hoodoos and fins of Bryce and the approaching sun other than the curvature of the earth. It’s best to arrive early while it is still dark. The last stars are still twinkling above as the light begins to gather on the horizon. As the minutes slip by, the faint gray light struggles to push back the dark. As it gains strength, it gradually turns to first a pale orange and then an intense orange, crowned by the dark blue of the still, night sky. It is thrilling to experience and it continues to get even better.
The glow on the horizon continues to grow, becoming a blinding yellow as the night quickly recedes. Just when you think the glow couldn’t get any more intense, a fiery sliver appears and continues to grow inexorably into the brilliant orange disk of our very own star. That’s when the hoodoos, arrayed in the soft, gentle light of dawn, change their robes for the glorious first light of morning.
The morning light can be very deceptive and great care must be taken. The light on the hoodoos is so intense that the slightest overexposure will erase the texture in the brightest spots. It is important to pay very close to the histogram to prevent this.
But it’s even more complicated than that. It’s the red light that is the most intense. The histogram may show that your exposure is fine when it takes in all the colors. But overexposure of the red light is what in fact erases the textures. It is the red channel histogram that must be carefully watched. This often leads to slightly underexposed the image.
The photograph was taken from Sunset Point which, strangely, is the best place to shoot sunrise. I pointed the camera south toward an area I had attempted to photograph in the past without success. One of the challenges in intimate compositions such as this is the utter chaos that confronts you. Or should I say, “Challenges you!”? One of the goals of landscape photography is to find little bits of order amidst the chaos. With this photograph, that required getting clean borders; that is, borders that don’t have any elements protruding in that don’t belong.
It’s not hard to get clean borders on the sides and top. But the bottom can be quite challenging. I was spectacularly unsuccessful on previous attempts. Fortunately, on this particular morning I found it.
The hoodoos standing erect and powerful remind me of castles and cathedrals. And I feel their energy as they rise from the amphitheater’s lower elevations to the left. There’s also a three-dimensional quality that almost propels the image off the paper. Had I waited a few more minutes the sun would have illuminated the dark background and the effect would have been lost. This image was captured within seconds of when the full disk of the sun cleared the horizon and was its most intense red.
When I drove home a few days later, my memory card contained an image that was optimally exposed, had a strong composition and had absolutely fantastic light.
Back in the digital darkroom, my objective was to express the intensity and drama of the moment. I added just the right amount of contrast create drama. I paid a great deal of attention to the highlights to ensure that the rich texture was preserved. I darkened the shadows without loosing any detail in the deepest ones. But I also set a black point, a very effective technique, especially in an image like this. Black points are tiny specks throughout the image that are pure black. They’re not large enough to recognize but they add a strong tonal foundation to the image.
As for the intensity of the colors, there’s always a strong temptation to heavily saturate them. And I did saturate the reds and oranges because I wanted the sunlit hoodoos to be intense and come at the viewer. I also wanted to give them a primeval quality as that is what was emerging. But I took care to not take the saturation too far. I tried to stop just before the saturation got to be too much.
There’s one more trick I frequently do in the digital darkroom. I vignette the corners and edges. By darkening them ever so slightly, it has the effect of drawing the viewer’s eye into the center of the image. The effect is subtle but very effective.
I find the process of making a photograph is often a collaborative effort involving the artist and the photograph. I did not have a pre-conceived notion of where this photograph would end up that cold morning on Sunset Point. In fact, I put off finishing it for several years because it didn’t jump out at me. It’s interesting how as one progresses on one’s photographic journey we change. I’ve noticed that each time I return to a place that I’ve visited many times before, I often see it differently.
That’s what happened with this image. When I came across it while looking for other things, this time it spoke to me and I was compelled to work on it. As it started to come to life it revealed to me the primeval message it wanted to say. I listened and did my best to communicate it.
As the image neared completion there came the matter of giving it a name. I played around with a number of titles that tried to capture the primeval feeling. But they just weren’t right. They were all awkward. It was getting late, so I decided to sleep on it. I saved the file, shut down my computer and went to bed.
When I awoke in the morning, my first thought was ‘Primal Dawn.’ The photograph was now complete.
Primal Dawn is available for purchase on FineArtAmerica. Click Here to see this and other fine art photographs by Ralph Nordstrom.
Join Ralph in Bryce Canyon or any of the other spectacular locations where he leads photography workshops. Click here for more information.
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