Frozen Flame

The spot I made this in is about four or five feet across and you have to duck to get through it, which is among the tightest passages in that canyon. There was no version of this frame without an ultra-wide; at 10mm I could take in the whole bend, and anything longer would have given me a piece of wall.

The rock reads to me as fire that set while it was still moving. The bands run and fold and double back, and in the small amount of light that reaches down there they have more motion in them than most moving things do. It was a clear morning outside and very little of that made it to where I was.

This is a lesser-known canyon in the same country as Antelope, and access runs through a single guide company, at least according to them. I was on a guided photography tour with a group of about a dozen. Antelope is the more impressive canyon of the two, deeper, with those high cavernous chambers everyone has seen photographed — and this one is smaller, quieter and far less worked over, which is what I liked about being in it.