Foto Friday: Grand Canyon Sunrise

This was my first photography trip to the Grand Canyon and my very first photography workshop. I didn’t really know what I was doing and I knew I wanted to get better at this, and the workshop seemed like a way to do that.

We were up before sunrise. The light came slow, then fast, the way it does in the desert. The sky built itself in layers, pale gold bleeding into deep orange, a band of blue still hanging above it all. I pointed the camera at the sky and started shooting.

That’s what you’re seeing here. It’s mostly sky and the layers of color. That’s exactly how it looked, but the foreground is an afterthought. The ground profile barely registers at the bottom of the frame as just a silhouette. I metered and framed for the sky and I got the sky.

If I made this shot today, I’d get lower and work some foreground into the photograph. I’d bring up those shadows in post so the canyon walls and hills have some weight and visibility. The beautiful colors of the canyon deserved to be in the picture.

With craft , you only see what you couldn’t do once you know how to do it. This image isn’t bad, but looking at it now, I can see exactly where I was and where my eye and my skill stopped. That gap has closed a little at a time, over years, over a lot of photographs and I’m still closing it with more time spent doing this work.

More of my photography at imagesbyericbrown.com or on Instagram .