One of the main reasons of our recent road trip was to see the Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona. The gorge of the Colorado River is one of the Wonders of the World and I think everyone who has seen it understands why. It’s really a magnificent canyon. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt visited the site and said:

The park celebrated its 100th anniversary in February this year. The canyon was created by the incision of the Colorado River and it’s huge, deep, and has many layers of colorful rocks, which makes it absolutely beautiful. I wanted to photograph the South Rim of this gorgeous canyon during sunset and also during sunrise so we camped inside the park. While the conditions were mediocre at sunset, the light was perfect at sunrise so I was able to take most of the photographs I had envisioned. The contrast was obviously huge during sunrise so I usually bracketed three exposures for these images, two stops apart, and blended them with Lightroom’s HDR Merge.

Gear: Canon EOS 7D camera, Canon 17-40mm F/4 and 70-200mm F/4 lenses, Manfrotto tripod.