Because the slot canyon is on Navajo land, solely approved Navajo tour guides and organizations can lead excursions. There are normally two sorts of excursions of Antelope Canyon: the final “for everybody” tour the place you’re crammed into the canyon with a ton of different individuals all utilizing their telephones and it truthfully feels type of contrived and the “photographer solely” tour the place your guides cram everybody on the common tour out of your shot so that you even have time to take a correct image with a tripod and it truthfully feels type of contrived.Petapixel experiences that, as of December twentieth, 2019, Navajo Nationwide Parks will not enable “photographer solely” excursions of Higher Antelope Canyon. All excursions after that would be the common excursions with no tripods allowed.
I see the great and the unhealthy right here. Whereas the canyon is desperately overcrowded and little doubt everybody has seen unbelievable footage of it by now (and claimed to promote them for tens of millions of {dollars}), it’s nonetheless an superior expertise for any panorama photographer. Sure it’s a bit contrived however man it’s price it. I went in 2013, earlier than I knew what I used to be doing with a digital camera, and liked each second.
The excellent news is they will now focus extra on the common excursions and herald extra money for the Navajo individuals. The unhealthy information is that may imply extra persons are crammed into the tiny slot canyon. The even worse information is, the place you used to see numerous the identical well-exposed pictures, you’ll now simply see everybody’s cellphone pictures or grainier handheld pictures with good cameras.
It seems to be the tip of an period at Antelope Canyon. However not till the twentieth. And guess who booked a last-minute journey to Arizona at present