Shooting the Shooter - Snow Canyon 2018

Ann and I are still refining ideas for our fall trip (Hayden Valley in Yellowstone??) and, of course, some of that involves revisiting our images from previous trips (well, more for Ann than me given the number of things on my plate and her being productive while I’m working . . . ).  In her reviews (which have also produced a number of re-found images!) she came across a shooting the shooter image from our last trip to Snow Canyon.  And that, they say, has the makings of a blog post.

The image was taken on our afternoon hike to check out the black rocks we’d only seen from a distance previously.  It was pretty late in the afternoon - almost 5:00 - and the sun had finally lost its harshness, giving us some wonderful textures in the landscape.

I’d turned my attentions northward, looking downward between the massive rock formations (from which we had to hike up to get to where we were), across the area where we’d photographed from that morning, to the white mountain-like formations that form the northern boundary of Snow Canyon.  

Ann’s image of me doesn’t show the fairly steep drop off in front of me (there was a decent sized ledge about 3 feet lower, and then the real drop off . . .), but her image captures much of what I was focusing on and gives you even more of the spectacular sky that originally caught my attention.

To be honest, I consider the image to not be very successful.  It doesn’t quite capture the intense feeling of the light and clouds that I had wanted.  And composition of the black-topped rocks leading to the swooping shadow to the right, that sweeps upwards to the brilliant white mountains and stark, dark clouds doesn’t quite live up to what was in my mind’s-eye (read: it isn’t strong enough to actually do what I was hoping for [as a side note, I learned the Portuguese word for hope this week, esperança, used with the preposition com ]).  Other than as an image to learn from, it’s not much.  But Ann’s image is a great reminder of just how lucky we’ve been to be able to get out into these landscapes for extended periods and to take our time photographing.

Anyway, back to my image.  I think it comes across better in black and white, and Ann agrees.

Yet as is often the case when I’m trying to understand why a composition didn’t work, I also tried developing the image in color.  It’s easy to see that color wasn’t the issue.  

In reality, I think I simply framed the image too tightly.  I often work on framing my images tighter and, over the years, that’s how I tend to immediately respond to a subject.   Except I’m slowly starting to realize (especially after looking at Ann’s lovely landscapes) that broader landscape images need a bit more room to breathe and live in.  Here, I think it would have allowed the dark-topped rocks to actually be seen and, of course more sky would have added to the drama of the image.  If I’d only thought to put a wider lens on the camera!

The good news is, we’ve booked a couple of nights in Snow Canyon this trip and we’ve discussed hiking into this area again.  So maybe I’ll have another shot at it!