In the early days of my photographic career I would visit this place at lease a couple of times each year. The luxury for me, at that time, is that few people were aware of it. At that time this place could only be reached by rapeling in, and then of course coming out the way we came in... using a rope. Later an enterprising young tribal member constructed a vey rickety ladder type of mechanism, and charged a $20.00 to go in, where I then could spend almost a whole day in solitude, or with a backpacking buddy I used to travel with. To figure this out, the camera was aimed almost straight up and then turned at an angle to give the image a better flow. The SBR, scene brightness range, of the image was over fifteen stops of light from the darkest area to the most brilliant highlight. I used a Toyo 45A camera, a 135mm Nikkor lens and Kodak Tri-X Professional film. I used an extremely dilute solution of HC-100 developer, 1 ounce of syrup in a gallon of water with a total development time of 35 minutes using tray development.
Excellent Black & White of a popular slot canyon
Thank you for sharing this image and your story. I can only imagine what it would have been like, Wonderful, exciting, frightening and exhausting but totally worth it!
I think the "SBR" you mention is a key factor to consider before going to a place like this with a traditional camera, it's such a huge range. We went to one, first time, last year and it was no easy task with a mirrorless for me. But I must admit, if you know how to set up an iPhone, you can get great images depicting the full range of light pretty easily, like my wife got!
A couple of years after I did this there was a huge flood that killed a group of people that were being led by a guide from New Jersey who had no knowledge of how the desert works, or how dangerous it can be. He thought that because the sky was clear above him that all was well. However, there was a monster thunderstorm several miles up drainage and all the water from that funneled through this tiny canyon. It is over 80 ft deep in places and there are turns in it where you can touch both sides with your hands. The only person that escaped was the tour guide. Most of the bodies from the group were never found.
How tragic and important to let people know of the dangers associated with slot canyons and the desert in general.
We were also warned of the possibilities of rattlesnakes wandering inside or who may have fallen in from above.
I have seen a few of rattlers in there. Generally it's cool enough that they aren't very active though. But still, I've seen people do some very stupid things, so anything is possible. Never underestimate the ability of large groups of people to do very stupid things.