The greatest things ever done on Earth have been done little by little.

-William Jennings Bryan

Story behind the image…

From Wikipedia…The Grand Canyon is 277 miles (446 km) long, up to 18 miles (29 km) wide and attains a depth of over a mile (6,000 feet or 1,800 metres).^[2] Nearly two billion years of the Earth‘s geological history has been exposed as the Colorado River and its tributaries cut their channels through layer after layer of rock while theColorado Plateau was uplifted.^[3] While the specific geologic processes and timing that formed the Grand Canyon are the subject of debate by geologists,^[4]recent evidence suggests the Colorado River established its course through the canyon at least 17 million years ago.^[5][6] Since that time, the Colorado River continued to erode and form the canyon to its present-day configuration.^[7]

Late afternoon on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.  I positioned myself so that I was shootingin down one canyon which lead to another off in the distance.  The trail winding it’s way through the image adds scale.  Tilting the camera downwards a bit to include foreground gives the sense of space/distance.  While the image could have been created with a single exposure, I wanted the HDR look with greater tonal range so I dialed in a five frame bracket with a base exposure of ISO 100 f8 @ 1/60 sec and processed the HDR image using Photomatix Pro and then added the finishing touches in Photoshop CS6 using NIK creative filters.    Nikon D4, AF-S 28-300mm 3.5-5.6 VR

Once indoors we travelled down some long corridors.  I waited until the last and then turned to make a couple of photos when the guard told me I could take photos.  I apologized and put my camera down.  We continued the tour and as we were returning down the corridor, he caught my attention and told me I could shoot the corridor now because he wasn’t in it.  I thanked him and fired of a couple of sequences.  So, I could photograph the Dam but not the guard.  Works for me.  Go figure…

After photographing one direction, I turned the camera and shot in the other direction…

We finished the tour in the depths of the Dam looking at the heart of the entire operation…

All images were handheld, 5 frame brackets.  Being on a tour doesn’t allow for time to set up a tripod and take long exposures.  This is where digital comes into it’s own…the ability to make an image, handheld, on the fly, at high ISO settings and realize your vision using the tools available to us in the digital darkroom.  Ya gotta love the freedom and fun digital photography provides us!