CraigBILL

One of the gems of the Grand Canyon is Toroweap. This dramatic landscape is where the Grand Canyon narrows into a deep 3000 foot deep scar in the Earth’s surface. Other more accessible and popular points in the Grand Canyon are found mostly on the Southern edges where the canyonscape is more spread out and terraced. In fact, rarely do you see the Colorado River from those view points. But in Toroweap, the river is on display thousands of feet below, stretching East to West.

I wanted to get the sunrise over this point of Toroweap. I had seen from other photographs that beautiful pinks and cool blue colors were present, and I wanted to showcase these hues along with the early morning stars. To get this image right, I had to set up and sleep on and off all night to get the exposures that would make this possible. That night was not comfortable! The wind kicked up bad and my tent was close enough to the edge where my camera was that I kept dreaming that I was blown over the edge! Yep, no sleep.

“Dawn of Time”, despite the late night weather, was made possible by fusing three time slices together. First, I captured the stars in the dark sky above before any hint of dawn glow began. Then patiently I waited until just before sunrise to expose the landscape with just the right amount of extended shutter to “burn” in all the beautiful cool canyon colors. And finally just as the sun broke the horizon, catch the sun flare and warm colors as the sunlight poured over the canyon scene before it became too bright.