Green Wall, Taylor Creek Canyon, Zion National Park

Green Wall, Taylor Creek Canyon, Zion National Park

After photographing the backlit scene in the Kolob Canyons (see my last posted photo) and discovering a trail, we ventured along that trail deeper into the canyon. The canyon was initially wide, dry, and in the open sun but as we hiked further the walls closed in and it got cooler (indeed it ended in snow) and greener as well. The trail eventually was either lost or ended but we easily traversed along the south canyon wall.

Along the way this incredible flash of green caught our eyes along the canyon wall. I typically go into great detail about the circumstances that lead to the photographs I share, but in this case I don't feel as compelled to explain exactly what was happening here. If you reflect on the circumstances you can probably intuit what caused this bright green stripe to occur on the red canyon wall. Either way, it's not the cause that's important - I was just excited to find another great example of the incredible show this small canyon put on display for us as we hiked its length.

I made a small error when focusing the camera for this photograph, though it didn't ruin it either. When focusing a large format camera (for those who are unfamiliar) the image appears on a piece of ground glass on the back of the camera. Unlike other viewfinders however, the image appears upside-down and flipped left-to-right. Normally this is not a problem, but in this case I intended to leave more open space towards the far end of the green stripe (on the left side of the image you see here). I inadvertently framed it with that open canyon wall on the left side of the ground glass, which became the right side of the photograph. This may be the first time I've gotten that confused with the reversed image. I also photographed this with the frame vertical, in order to capture more of the green stripe. However the resulting image just felt completely imbalanced to me and selected to crop this as you see here instead. Some people are vehemently against cropping for some reason, but I personally have no reservations about it. The composition itself is obviously fairly simple here and I wish there had been some other elements to draw into the scene. But the green stipe only appeared at a certain angle, and I did the best I could with what nature presented.

Tachihara 4x5 | Caltar II-N 150 f/5.6 | f/22 | 1s | Fuji Velvia 50 | Tripod

View more related images in my Zion National Park Gallery.

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