Sunset from Navajo Point, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Arriving at the south rim of the Grand Canyon just at sunset, we stopped at Navajo Point. I made this image using three captures combined in Photoshop, all captures tripod mounted at ISO 100 and f/11. The exposure times were .25 of a second, .3 of a second, and 1/6 of a second.

One of the tough things about the Grand Canyon is knowing how to frame this huge and wide “hole in the ground.” Certainly, a panorama is a good possibility, but if you don’t go that route you need to make a composition that is attractive to the eye and has some boundaries. I tried to achieve that here, using a moderate wide angle and the glimpse of the Colorado River to create a meandering path for the eye to wander.

One easy thing: there’s no “canyon conundrum” here. Highly saturated colors are quite distinct in the image, as they were “being there.”

We were planning to camp, but by the time I finished photography it was pitch dark, and there were no spaces in the park campground. Leaving the park, the kids began to understand the meaning of “tourist trap” as we got the last available room just outside the park boundary on the way back towards Flagstaff.