Karen Tillison and Tim Fleming Present their photography exhibit at Spectrum Gallery for the Month of April, 2026. This is a presentation of Images that were purposely made during Expeditions to interesting places. We want our photographs to tell a grand story. And we hope that it is the kind of story that will inspire the viewers to go on with their own adventures. We consider our trips to be Photography Expeditions because each trip has the main purpose being to make great photographs. Some Expeditions are very far away some are just around the corner, but each one takes special planning to be in the right place at the right time including: the best light, the season, the cycle of the sunset or moon and stars and also to be fully ready with all equipment that might be needed depending on the type of landscape photography we want to do each day.

Since both of us have spent many years studying photography through workshops and classes, Books and magazines, trips with other photographers, YouTube videos and Blogs, each of us has invented our own systems for seeing and capturing these images while traveling. We have chosen the best of the best images from our archives and also, we will present these images with our own unique style.

Karen Tillison:

I have made a several trips into the Arizona and Utah deserts to photograph, and Antelope Canyon is one of my favorites. My latest trip was no exception. 

After a week-long canoe trip on the Green River in Utah, my next stop was Antelope Canyon located on Navajo Nation land in the northernmost part of Arizona.

For the next three days, I spent time in three slot canyons, Upper Antelope Canyon, Canyon X and Lower Antelope Canyon which requires a Navajo guide.  

On the first day I went to Upper Antelope Canyon which is the easiest to access and the most popular along with being the most crowded.  You are limited to two hours in this slot canyon, which doesn’t allow enough time for photography.  My guide on this tour offered to take me and one other photographer to Canyon X the next day.

Canyon X is on the Kaibito Plateau, a part of the Navajo Reservation, and is located on land that two Navajo sisters live on and have grazing rights for cattle.   At the time, Canyon X was mostly unknown and difficult to get to. It was seldom visited except by the Navajo and my guide was the only one the sisters allowed to take visitors into the canyon. This was a wonderful opportunity to photograph areas not usually seen.  Tours were not allowed there, and because of this, we were not limited by time and spent the entire day there. Many of my photographs of the slot canyons came from this area.

On my third day I went to lower Antelope Canyon.  While I was waiting to sign up for a tour, I met Chris, a young man with Navajo Security, who monitors every one’s two-hour-time limit in the slot canyon.  I was talking to him about my trip to Canyon X the day before and found out that the two women living on the property are his aunts.  He said that he had only been into Canyon X once at night with some of his friends, and that he was amazed that I had actually been there because it is so difficult to get to.  He then let me go into Lower Antelope Canyon by myself without a guide, ahead of the next tour, and let me stay and photograph the area until I was ready to leave.  

On the top of the plateau, Lower Antelope Canyon is a little over a mile-long hole in the ground and very deep. You keep dropping deeper as you continue down into the slot canyon.  The canyon is extremely narrow in many areas and at times you have to squeeze between the rock walls because there is no place to put your feet which can get a little dicey at times. The  Lower Antelope Canyon feels like being on another planet.

The slot canyons’ colors and rock formations are incredible…….They really are magical places.