Sedona

The first day of our Sedona trip was spent with our photographer/guide, Susie Reed who led us to some photo sites I had not seen in earlier visits.

The first location was Rachel’s Knob, a promontory at the end of Long Canyon Road, north of the town. I took a number of shots, including this first one looking across a valley to mountains on the opposite side. It was mid-afternoon light, which washed out the colour a bit, so I chose to convert the image to black & white.

From there, we moved down to an area on Oak Creek, on the south side of Sedona. From here we had a good view of Cathedral Rock among other sights along the creek. We took a number of photographs which got better as the afternoon progressed and the light grew dim and softer. The pictures I’m including today were all taken later in the day, before and after sunset.

My first picture features a lone, small shrub on the rocky creek bank. Nothing special about it, it’s just something that caught my eye with the last rays of the sun illuminating some of the leaves.

The leaves were lasting longer across the creek, with the bushes still sporting some brilliant colour.

My favourite picture of the day  captured the (almost) full moon above Cathedral Rock, with its reflection in the puddle in the foreground.

The last picture  from this location was taken as it was getting quite dark. As a result it was a very long exposure, 30 seconds. I was after the reflection of the moonlight in the creek and I’m happy with that result. The difficulty with a long exposure is the unanticipated motion. If you look closely at the trees in the middle of the frame, you’ll see the leaves blurred. I’ve captured their movement due to the wind over a period of 30 seconds. Another consequence of a long exposure in this scene is the appearance of the water. All sense of motion is gone, the water looks static. I’m not putting down my own picture, rather I’m using it to illustrate some the pitfalls of photographing in the dark. In hindsight, I’d have been better of to increase the ISO and speed up the exposure.

We moved on to our final location after nightfall. Our purpose was to get pictures of Bell Rock and the Courthouse after dark. In the following picture, I got both. Despite the bright moonlight we were able to capture the stars in the clear sky. In this case, no motion, no problem.