Lane Bigthumb soothing the savage photographer in Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona.
Well the winter storm has subsided and we are left to dig out of 18+ inches of snow. Its late and I’m still up so I thought I would post a portrait from Antelope Canyon. My model is Lane Bigthumb, my Navajo guide and son of Carol Bigthumb. Carol has been my guide for all my trips to Antelope Canyon. Carol ‘s family has the grazing rights to the land where Upper Antelope Canyon, Rattlesnake Canyon, and Mountain Sheep Canyon are located. You can get information on her trips at Adventurous Antelope Canyon Tours, or contact her at cbigthumb@yahoo.com. You can see more of my Antelope Canyon images on my website at Robert H. Clark Photography.
The shot was made just inside in the main gallery of Upper Antelope. I was shooting a formation when Lane started to play. Though fairly subdued there was some very nice light on Lane and I liked the way he was framed. So I quickly turned the camera on him and used my headlamp to throw a little light on his face. In case you are wondering, out of respect for Lane and the spirit of the canyon, I did ask permission to photograph him. So as the sound of the flute echoed through the canyon I shot several images. Motion was a problem however and the image is a little soft but I like it nonetheless.
Shot with a Sony a900 with a Zeiss 24-70mm lens, set to 35mm and f4 at 3 seconds. The RAW image was processed in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. In order to improve the contrast I used an inverse overlay with a Guassian Blur set to 40.0 pixels. This is in effect a contrast mask and it helped open up the shadows. There are a few basic curves for Lane and the background and a slight saturation adjustment.
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