One of my favorite places to explore photographically is the Southwestern United States and Utah is typically the highlight. I usually spend several weeks there every year in late fall, hiking and exploring to take advantage of cooler weather and colorful fall foliage. I have photographed in this region for decades and have visited this iconic waterfall several times. Usually, I have taken the well-travelled hiking trail to the waterfall, which until now was the only way to see these falls. The hike is not hard and is about 3 miles each way, and ends up at the base of the lower falls in a very deep box canyon, where the view is looking up at these falls.
On this fall trip, I wanted to try something different. I wanted to see it very early in the morning before the sun could light up the falls and the canyon bottom and create unwanted shadows. There is a highway high above the falls, but they are not visible from up there. I decided to try to fly my drone from up on the canyon rim down to the falls and see if I could get a unique vantage point to see the entire falls straight on and not look up at them from ground level. It worked very well, and I was able to fly down and make this 3-shot vertical panorama of the falls. I looked at my controller while making this image and noted that I was 778 feet below my takeoff point. It was dark enough down in the canyon that I was able to use a 1/10 second exposure to get a smoother look in the falls.
