I received two finalists in the March 2013 Better Photo contest.

They were both taken on the same Southwest Photo Trip.

The first one was at Horseshoe Bend Arizona which is about 5 miles south of Page AZ.  This is a site I had gone to about 20 years ago and always wanted to go back.  This photo was taken in the late afternoon when the sun wasn't the best for shooting the actual bend of the river, which is the main reason for going here.  There are some other photos of the Horseshoe Bend in my Landscapes folder, off the main menu.  But what was nice that afternoon was the way the sun was shining off the top of the canyon walls.  I had taken several shots from close by this same location when I saw this guy walk out to the edge.  I grabbed this opportunity to take a photo with someone in it to add to the perspective and was pleased at the final result.

Horseshoe Bend - Page AZ Aug 2012 - 01

The second one was taken during my walk through Lower Antelope Canyon, also just south of Page AZ (about 3 miles outside the city center).  I took many photos during that walk and had enough that I did a special multi-media slide show for just that outing which is available here.  Photographing the canyons was difficult because of the extreme ranges of highlight and shadows.  I took all the photos with either 5, 7 or 9 frames and blended them together with HDR to be able to include the darks to lights.  This particular shot, when I took it, was so dark from my vantage point that I did not know right away that two people were standing in the canyon opening (otherwise I wouldn't have chopped their feet off in this photo ... :-)  But again, sometimes it's the little surprises that we receive the most pleasure from and this photo has turned out to be one of my personal favorites from that trip.

Lower Antelope Canyon AZ - Aug 2012 - 33a