The photo above was selected by the Journal of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) for the front cover artwork of the September 14, 2011 issue. Each year the Journal holds a photo contest, and from among the entries the editor selects 'scientific' or 'scenic' images for use on alternate issues. I have submitted entries for the past several years and, to date, have been pleased to have had eight photos selected. The Journal does an excellent job of printing and color matching (compare the original and 'as-printed' versions above), and the cover layout is very clean, with minimal text to obscure the image. For those who arrived here via the link from the EMBO website, I thought a brief description of the making of the photograph might be of interest.

Antelope Canyon is a narrow, deep and sinuous slot canyon located on the Navajo reservation near Page, Arizona. It has become an icon among photographers because of the way sunlight bounces from the sandstone walls to create a wonderful yellow-red glow and abstract patterns. Given some care with exposure settings (and a day when the canyon is not packed with tourists!) it is easy to come back with a collection of great phorographs. The trouble is that the canyon long ago became a photographic cliche. The first time you see an Antelope canyon photo it is stunning; but after a while all the images, even those taken by the photographic greats, start to look rather alike. I can only envy the pioneers, including Galen Rowell and Alain Briot, who first 'discovered' the canyon and could present their work to a fresh and unjaded audience. Antelope canyon thus falls into a category together with other icons such as Delicate Arch and the view from Deadhorse Point which are fun to photograph, and a necessary addition to the repertoire of a photographer of the American Southwest, but from where you don't expect to achieve more than the classic 'trophy' shot.

That said, the canyon (lower Antelope in particular) is a fun place to explore, and offers a welcome opportunity to have a subject where the lighting is good for photography in the middle of the day. I had stopped off to break the journey while driving from Zion to Cedar Mesa, and spent a few hours wandering up and down the canyon looking for the 'glow'. I was getting cold (this was mid-November) and starting to think about mole enchiladas in Page, but rather than climbing out the set of ladders leading from the bottom of the canyon decided to take a last trip up through the canyon. One section had rather nice light, and as I squeezed behind a boulder to get a wider view I discovered that I had company - a startlingly green preying mantis. I suspect he did not want to be there, and had been blown down by strong winds the previous day. But, there he was, sitting on the boulder, presenting a remarkable foreground for a unique shot of the canyon.

How to get the photo? That presented several, interrelated problems. It's dark in the depths of the canyon, requiring exposures of around a second that really need a tripod for sharp results. But, space was tight - not enough to set up my tripod properly so I ended up with just two legs jammed against the boulder. Next, a preying manis is small, the canyon is big,, and I had only a wide-angle lens which needed to be within just a few inches of the green guy to get the proportions and composition right. That raised the issue of depth of field; how to get both insect and canyon in sharp focus?. I could not stop down the lens very far while keeping a reasonable exposure time, and I suspect that even the smallest aperture would not have sufficed. So, my ploy was to take two exposures, focused separately for the preying mantis and the canyon, aiming to blend them later in Photoshop. This is not cheating! - just a means to overcome a technical limitation. For those who might suspect the final result as being no more than a Photoshop artifice, HERE is a link to a straight conversion of the original RAW file, and HERE is one of many failures. Last problem, my subject would not keep still. Although I used a mild fill-flash to highlight the green guy, I wanted him mostly illuminated by the natural light filtering down from the sky overhead to avoid that unnatural 'caught in the headlights' apearance. Digital to the rescue. I took about 50 shots, and ended up with two where he stayed still enough to come out acceptably sharp. Luckily, one of those two also gave a nice composition, wth the green guy appearing to admire the view of the canyon. He was probably getting fed up with me by then. He kept scurrying over the top of the boulder, but I had found I could get him to back up to where I wanted by putting my hand an inch ahead of him. At the end I wondered about trying to take him back out to a more hospitable above-ground environment, but decided not given the difficulty of safely transporting him up narrow ladders while also carrying camera and tripod. I hope he may have found some insects to snack on down there...