Celestial Convergence ~ Grand Canyon National Park

After a wonderful evening spent photographing the Grand Canyon from a infrequently visited spot near Desert View, my workshop client, Satta, and I made our way back to our vehicles as the last glimmer of daylight faded in the distance. We were tired, we felt good about a very productive day of photography from many interesting locations in the park, and we were ready to call it a day. Having packed our cameras were safely away in our bags, it was time for dinner.

As we get to our vehicles we both happened to turn around and look back at the western sky one last time, and there they were. Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon were all in a line across the night sky with some high-altitude clouds catching the last rays of daylight.

We quickly retrieved our cameras from their packs, grabbed a 24mm lens, mounted the cameras to our tripods and began shooting. The exposure settings for this shot were ISO 400, f/4.0, and 20 seconds on the shutter. Satta was getting a much longer shutter speed which was going to have the effect of creating star trails,which we were trying to avoid. A quick review of his settings and the camera revealed the problem, he had a circular polarizer mounted to the lens which results in less light passing through the lens to the camera’s sensor. He quickly removed the filter and the problem was solved!

This particular experience made me think about two teaching points that I always try to drive home; 1…try to pay attention to what is happening behind you (it may be more interesting than what you are currently photographing), and 2…be prepared for unexpected photo opportunities. Number 2 is especially important as I believe that we should be open to photographing at any time. It’s great to go out and capture exactly what you set out to photograph, but that doesn’t mean that we should be so focused on getting the shot that we miss out on other opportunities.