Photographing The Grand Canyon Of The East – Letchworth State Park, NY

August 5, 2017 by libertatemamo 41 Comments

Pre-Post Note/ I’m in UK at the moment. This is a pre-written post from our time at Letchworth State Park end of July. Enjoy!

My first thought when I looked at the map was “Oh no, the overlooks are all on the West side”. This may seem a strange first impression of a rather iconic place, but as a photographer I’m always thinking about orientation, and this one was going to be an especially painful one for me.

You see, before I get to a place I often dream about particular shots (weird I know, but I really do) and in this case I had a very precise image in my minds eye. It was of a sun flare over the canyon, golden light bathing the forested slopes with the river sparkling like diamonds below. A few clouds would be nice too, just for color effect, but the sun flare was the key to it all and it had to happen at the exact moment the sun crested the canyon tops (otherwise the effect would be lost). In this case the map showed the Canyon running North-South, with all the overlooks on the West side, so that meant…..{{gulp}}….a sunrise shoot.

Argh, sunrise shoots…the bane of my existence!

I am SO not a sunrise person in any way at all. I’m grumpy, tired, and clumsy as all get-out in the mornings, and a bit of a nightmare for those around me to boot. I’m happy to shoot sunsets all year long, and even night shoots when conditions are right. But sunrise requires superhuman Nina effort and some serious motivation, all with the caveat that I might well get my reluctant butt out there and the shoot could be a total bust.

Oh, and of course I do all of these alone. Our 20 years together have wizened Paul to the not-so-difficult conclusion that early mornings are the perfect time to leave this particular Dane alone. He would have to be utterly insane to join me.

I’m so averse to sunrises that I’ve literally only attempted them in four places in our 8 years on the road, and only for particularly spectacular spots -> The Grand Canyon (AZ), The Sawtooth Mountains (ID), Grand Teton National Park (WY) and Mono Lake (CA).

Would Letchworth State Park, NY now become my fourth?

Letchworth State Park

We’d been hearing about this place from blog readers and friends ever since we announced our visit to the Finger Lakes area. Much like Watkins Glen, this is a “must see” Canyon in the area but unlike the former this is no small deal.

Letchworth is a huge and wide monster, a 14,427-acre (58.4 km2) Gorge roughly 17 miles (27 km) long and up to several miles wide, following the course of the Genesee River. The walls of the gorge are layers of shale, limestone and sand that rise up to 550 feet (170 m) in height. The bedrock itself is very old, from the Devonian age (319 to 428 million years ago), but the Gorge itself is a youngster in Geological terms, having only revealed itself in the past 10,000 years or so from the retreat of the last continental glacier.

It’s a beautiful, big, gaping hole in the otherwise gently rolling hills of the surrounding countryside.  It’s vastness has given it the nick-name of “Grand Canyon of the East”, and as far as Eastern views go it’s definitely earned that distinction.

For travelers there’s a large RV Campground on the north end of the Canyon (full review coming), over 66 miles of hiking trails, 3 major waterfalls (all on the south end), and around 12 major viewpoints, all on the West side of the Gorge facing East. It’s a spot worth seeing, and I really wanted to photograph it “just right”.

The Best Photography Spots

I did a bunch of reading before I started scouting the Canyon, and I found 2 excellent posts that gave me a low-down of the general layout (THIS one and THIS one). Between these posts and my first drives around the park I deduced there were 2 main photography areas* in the Canyon:

• The North End – In this section of the park, the Canyon is very wide providing good open views of the western face and the river. There are several viewpoints here including the Dam Overlook and the somewhat obscured (but nice) Hogs Back Overlook, but IMO the best photography spot (which is, interestingly enough, not talked about anywhere) is undoubtedly Highbanks Recreation Area. It’s the wrong orientation for sunrise flares, but it’s got TONS of really good, wide open views. Plus you do get early light on the Canyon face, and (often) some interesting cloud effects at sunset. Park in the main parking lot and just walk the rim trail to the north. It’s wonderful!

  

• The South End – This is definitely THE big photography spot. The Canyon is narrower here, so you can get both sides in the shot with the river down below. This is also where the big waterfalls are, as well as the one and only place you can stand in the middle of the Canyon on the one and only bridge that leads from the West side to the East. The best overlooks are Tea Table, Great Bend, Archery Field, and Inspiration Point. Plus of course the three waterfalls, the first of which requires doing more than 100 stairs (Lower Falls, which is also the narrowest point of the Gorge and where you can stand on that bridge which spans the two sides), while the other two (Middle and Upper Falls**) can be accessed directly from a parking lot.

  

I scouted all the locations in the late afternoon and there was only ONE spot that tempted me enough for sunrise, Archery Field Overlook. The orientation was perfect, the Canyon sufficiently narrow, and the river in just the right direction to catch first light. If I was going to do it, this was going to be the spot.

*NOTE1/ I had a hard time tracking down a concise & easy-to-read map with all the key overlook/photography points so I created my own! If you want to access the interactive Google Maps version just click HERE.

**NOTE2/ Upper Falls was closed off when we were here due to construction. Literally no way to get close or get a shot. So unfortunately I have no pics of it.

The Preparation

I missed it, I just knew I had. I’d been watching the weather forecast on my iPhone for days, but my laziness had meant I’d just missed THE perfect photo morning.

It’d been raining quite a lot since we arrived you see, and yesterday had been the one and only all-day of perfectly clear sunshine. I don’t know why, but I’d procrastinated as I tend to do, and so I’d missed a whole precious day of guaranteed good photography.

Ah, Nina…seriously!

The following morning was looking so-so with 20% chance of rain and heavy clouds, but the rest of the week was looking even worse. So, if I was going to do it I had to try, even if the shoot ended up being a total bust. Sunrise was 5:45AM and it was going to take me 25 minutes to get on location. So that meant a 4:50AM wake up, just enough time to gobble down a half gallon of coffee and go.

Since my brain doesn’t function at that time of day I prepared all my photo gear the night before, laying everything out neatly on the dining room table to just grab and go. Camera batteries were fully charged, tripod was ready, extra memory cards were on-hand, and I even pre-set some of my camera settings (when I tripod shoot I often forget to turn off the vibration reduction on my lens which causes blur, so this time I did it ahead of time). No matter what happened next, I was ready to go!

The Night

No sleep for the restless….

I had trouble falling asleep, as I often do when I’ve got something exciting in the morning. So I tossed and turned trying to force myself to relax while watching precious sleep time tick away. Around 2AM I finally snoozed off, and of course that’s when the cat decided to plonk herself right next to me and throw up.

Ah yes, the hidden joys of pet ownership.

Cats are wonderful animals, independent, loving and easy to care for, but they are notorious for throwing up and even more notorious for doing such things are exactly the worst time. Those of you who have them will fully commiserate, and will be very familiar with the particular feeling of waking up to the heave of a puking feline. It’s a rather jarring wake-up call that never ends well, and it goes something like this…

You hear the first heaves through your dreams, and in the haze of your half-dream state you scramble to wake up in time to throw the cat off the carpet (where they invariably are) and onto the tile floor (where they should be… WHY don’t cats ever throw up on the darn tile?). You never make it of course, so by the time you’re actually conscious your “presents” have already been delivered (there’s always more than one) and you’re faced with the joy of dragging your butt out of bed to clean it up. Once you’ve completed the joyous experience of cleaning up the delivery, you’re wide awake and no longer able to sleep, whereas the cat has already curled herself up in a guilt-free slumber. Darn frikkin’ cats!

When I finally fell asleep again the alarm beeped almost instantaneously. I grumbled my way out of bed, chugged my coffee and started the drive south. What a start!

The Event

By the time I got to the shoot the sky was bathed in light blue light. I’d passed about 7 deer coming down here, all standing nervously at the side of the road ready to spring in front of my headlights (or so it seemed). But other than the deer not a single soul was around. It was heavily overcast too with thick grey clouds all over, so unless something changed right at sunrise chances were real slim that this was going to work out. I was either going to be the luckiest photographer out here or the only fool to get up this early for a bust shot. Either way I was here now, so I was going to give it a try.

I set my tripod up on the wall and waited.

Sunrise time came and went without a single interesting change. Just grey and more grey, really not worth shooting at all. The light got lighter, but nothing was happening either in the clouds or down in the Canyon. 15 mins after official sunrise it was the same, and 30 minutes later too. Then, just as I was about to pack up and leave it happened. The clouds suddenly thinned to a string of pink threads in the sky, a circle opened just above the Canyon rim and the sun emerged. BAM! The sun flare burst open and the Canyon exploded into golden light. I clicked my shutter furiously taking around 15 different exposures of the same view. 30 seconds later the sun rose above the rim and the effect was gone. Did I catch it??

The next 4 hours passed in what seemed like minutes. The sun flare was already long gone of course, but the light was good, really good, so I was fully absorbed in photography heaven, lost in the dance of color and changing shadows before me. I shot the upper Canyon from all angles, walking along the rim to admire the fast-changing views, I drove down to Middle Falls to catch first light on the water and was greeted with a rainbow (nice touch, Universe), I headed on over to Lower Falls to capture the narrowest part of the Canyon, and then I drove back through all the viewpoints for one last look. Plus I had it ALL to myself. Literally no-one around except for a few squirrels. Heavenly!!

By the time mid-morning hit the first tourists were rolling in, but the best light was gone and I was exhausted, but happy. Despite everything leading up to it, the photo outing had been a roaring success!!

And The Rest

We spent the rest of the week just hanging around the area, working (as we always do) and enjoying the trails and nearby town of Perry.

There’s a Sat Farmers Market (lovely, dog-friendly) a few cute downtown shops and a surprising number of churches. Plus there’s an excellent brewery (Silver Lake Brewing Project -> great IPAs here, plus outdoor area is dog-friendly) and a very tasty restaurant (Hole In the Wall) not far away. It rained a ton so we didn’t have many days out, plus our campsite was a lake (literally), but we thoroughly enjoyed our private setting, the trees and the surrounding nature. We even squeezed in a few days of family time when Paul’s dad and stepmom rolled by in their RV on week-end. It was a really quick visit, but we’ll be seeing them again soon 🙂

And of course the best thing of all? I totally got the shot I dreamed about before I got here, at least as good as my limited skills are able to capture. For a photographer it doesn’t get much better than this, and it’s an event I’ll remember for ever more. A rough night, a grumpy morning, but a SPECTACULAR sunrise. Not bad, Letchworth, not bad at all….

Useful External Links:

• Letchworth State Park -> Official website HERE
• Loaded Landscapes -> Photographer’s Guide to Letchworth State Park (New York)
• Lightscapes Nature Photography Blog -> Letchworth State Park