Beautiful shot. Obviously I was not there and did not have to deal with difficult light conditions, so this a genuine question: isn't that picture overexposed? I guess it must have been quite dark at the bottom of the canyon and your picture still appears quite bright. I am just wondering if a bit less exposure would have saved some details in the brightly lit sand and emphasize the darkness of the canyon. What do you think?
it is surprisingly bright in the canyon, especially when these sunbeams come down. the canyon is only about 100 feet deep, and there's a fair amount of light reflecting back and forth in there, especially at midday. this image appears bright because of the relatively long exposure. i took a number of shots of this, including some that were deliberately 1 or 2 stops underexposed, and even in those, that patch of sand where the light hits is too bright. since the spot of light would be overexposed no matter what, i chose to sacrifice that patch of light on the sand in order to bring out the colors and details in the rest of the scene. i think you'll find most photos of this phenomenon suffer from the same problem, and most photographers choose to let the light patch blow out, rather than leave the rest of the scene in darkness... after all, the idea is to show off the colors of the canyon, not the detail in a small patch of sand...