(This is a continuation of the conversation from the previous post.)

I went back and checked the time of day of both of my visits to Canyon X and notice that the shots from the 2017 trip (April) were much better than the ones from 2018 (also April).  Probably that is due to the time of day – I was there from around 3:30 to 5:30PM in 2017 and from 12:30-2PM in 2018.

An aside:

(Those times are from my iPhone, but don’t take them as absolute.  One of the joys of traveling in AZ among all of the various sites is that while AZ does not observe DST, the reservations (and maybe the National Parks?  Can’t remember) do.  So you can be driving along the road at noon, and then park 50’ from the road and walk up to the concession for your noon appointment and find you missed it by an hour.  (or maybe the other way around?)  And sometimes your phone knows, and sometimes it doesn’t.  Bottom line is that it’s a mess.  And so if you make reservations for a particular time slot at a site, make sure you confirm with them not only the time, but also what time zone they observe.)

Back to the point:

It wouldn’t be a surprise at all that the colors are much better early / late in the day versus midday due to the way the lighting in slot canyons work.  The sunlight enters the top of the slot and lights up the top part of the walls.  That light is then reflected from the sandstone colored surface farther down to more sandstone surfaces.  The more times it bounces, the more color you get.  Get in the right spot with a lot of bouncing going on and you won’t need to peg the saturation slider to get the colors you’re wanting.  Sometimes you get both blue (direct skylight) light and reflected light at the same time for some interesting highlights.   Also, you may choose to do HDR brackets in some spots if you have a super wide brightness range or end up with some sky in the photo.

Anyway, early or late might be better if you have that flexibility.  Other sites you may go to around there might be more flexible for times of day.  E.g., I’ve never been to horseshoe bend where I didn’t walk away with gorgeous shots regardless of the time of day.