I stumble out of bed, cursing myself and the world around me.
Grabbing my flashlight, I use it to navigate my pitch-black room while trying not to disturb my roommate. I grab my batteries out of the charger and load them into the camera. Stuff the D300 and N80 into my backpack, wrestle my tripod out from underneath the bed and throw on a hoodie and some shoes.
We arrived at the Grand Canyon at 5:17am. It was bitterly cold and windy. Gina and Alysia, friends of mine who drove us to the grand canyon, huddled in a sleeping bag to stay warm.
They took a bit of a nap while I waited for the sun to come up.
(shot taken using my 8-LED flashlight instead of a strobe).
When we finally got some dawn glow going on, I realized there was WAY too much cloud cover for a good sunrise. We got good sunrise colors for 15 minutes but they were limited to a very small part of the horizon and the color did not go into the clouds nearly as much as I had hoped.
So, I shot 80 ish pictures by the time the color in the sky disappeared with the beginning of a gloomy overcast day.
I got one decent picture, which I converted to black and white and did some extensive photoshop and Aperture adjustments on:
Overall it was quite an adventure, and one I would happily repeat again, prepared with some food and a sleeping bag of my own.
That's all for now.
-Matt
