Navajoland Slot Canyons

I would like to share with you some of the images I created from a full day of exploring and photographing several slot canyons in the heart of the Navajo Nation. These amazing canyons were known to the Navajo people (and the Anasazis before them) long before the Europeans came to North America. Many of the slot canyons are sacred to the Navajo people, or Diné as they prefer to call themselves, meaning “the people”. I would like to thank Native Diné Carol Bigthumb for sharing her land and culture with me. In addition to Upper and Lower Antelope Canyon, she also showed me a few less known canyons. A visual spectacle takes place when light shafts penetrates the thin canyon slots from above. These light shafts only occur during mid-day in the spring and summer months. Depending on the time of year, the shafts may only appear for a few minutes at a time. Upper Antelope Canyon has up to 25 light shafts during mid-summer, but only 12 shafts during my visit in late August. Knowing the best timing for the various light shafts to appear is a science in itself. Carol was intimately familiar with the precise timing of the light shafts and hurried me from shaft to shaft so I could capture the magical play of light and color. If you would like to photograph these canyons, I cannot recommend Carol Bigthumb highly enough.