Upper Antelope Canyon in northeastern Arizona is an incredible place to photograph. However, it is also quite challenging. You must tour the canyon with a local tour company. The tour guides are very knowledgeable; they know all the best locations to capture images in the canyon, including when and where sunbeams appear during the summer. However, the canyon can also be crowded with people vying to take photos. You cannot use tripods in the canyon, and there are no separate photo tours.
Years ago, guides offered separate photo tours, during which a small group of photographers could use tripods, and a guide would stop the influx of other tour groups from entering photo frames. However, photo-tour guides only stopped other groups for one minute, as those groups wanted to keep moving through the canyon. Therefore, you had to set up your tripod and camera quickly, rapidly change camera settings for contrasting lighting conditions, and compose on the fly.
The time constraints were quite nerve-wracking the first time I went on a photo tour, but I did manage to capture an image of a sunbeam piercing the canyon.
