After a mid-day nap I returned to Mather Point for the sunset. It was a bit more crowded than the Watchtower, but I was early enough to stake out a spot with my tripod. My plan was a bit different from this morning – I will take a color calibration shot every 10-15 minutes and see how things go.

These first few pictures are from my initial “still enough sun” calibration.

I now started taking calibration shots and following with a western panorama every 10-15 minutes. You may get bored of the setting, but I’m learning about the capability of my calibration profile process.

Lessons learned:

While I am happy with the near-distance cliff to the left and the “infinite” distance of the sky and clouds, starting with Sunset-5 the mid/far-distance canyons are overwhelmed with blue. My color profile generation software complained about the low exposure of each image, and I am not surprised. Yes, the canyon is in progressively more shadow due to the setting sun, but to my eyes at the time they certainly were not blue. I do like the cloud colors on Sunset-5, tho. I am surprised how illuminated the cliffs to the left were, but I guess the sunlight was reflecting off of Mather Point back onto the cliffs.

I’m not really using the ColorChecker card as it is designed. From what I read and saw on the internet:

Example – a professional photographer has a contract from a fashion studio to shot a model in their dress and jewelry. The photographer has complete control over the position, intensity and color of the lighting on the set. The photographer sets up a neutral background. The photographer poses the model to emphasize the clothing and jewelry. The model holds up the ColorChecker for the first few shots to ensure the final photographs show colors as the fashion studio intends.

Example – the wedding photographer directs the couple to spots with interesting background. They have a few directional lights and judges natural light to choose which lights to use and at what color. The assistant holds up the ColorChecker to fully account for the slight variability of the lighting.

I’m not doing these things at all. I am using the ColorChecker to account for changing light while aiming near the light source (the sun). With my exhaustive research of two sites I am overall happy with the results with the caveat that I can’t really trust the results for the first 30-45 minutes after dawn and the same time before dusk, with the exception of cloud colors. I need to experiment more to see if this is a canyon-unique issue.

In addition, I have no idea how this will work with wildlife. I am at the mercy of the facing of the vehicle, direction of natural light and difficult-to-predict animal actions.

I have another morning session tomorrow before I leave the Grand Canyon. More data for color science!