The Desert Southwest – a most magnificant place to photograph.
Waves of Stone
The desert southwest of the United States is one of the most beautifully wild places on the planet to photograph. Utah’s Canyon Lands and Arches National Parks, with their imposing read sandstone cliffs, are fascinating places to shoot incredible landscapes. Bryce and Zion National Parks are equally magnificent and offer grand vistas of unbelievably huge rock formations. Of course, there’s Arizona’s Grand Canyon, Canyon De Chelly, Saguaro National Park, Monument Valley and countless photo treasure sites everywhere you turn. Sunrises and sunsets, with their golden hues reflected on towering, rocky cathedrals are breath taking. It’s as if Mother Nature designed a place that was perfect for great experiences and taking pictures.
I could go on and on about all of the places I’ve been privileged to see, but my favorites are the hidden slot canyons that abound in the canyon country of Arizona and Utah. The Grand Canyon is a mile deep and over sixteen miles across in contrast to slot canyon walls that are only a few feet apart and are so enclosed that sunlight rarely reaches their depths. They have names like Buckskin Gulch, Baptist Draw, Lick Wash, and Antelope Canyon. For me, they can give a very intimate experience, and are much different from the overwhelming feelings I get when I see boundless landscapes. They have been sculpted over millenia by roaring wind and flash floods and their walls look like gentle waves engraved in stone. Pastel colors of yellow, pink, mauve; red and crimson are sometimes illuminated by piercing shafts of light that penetrate the abyss from the desert above. Take your tripod and shoot short time exposures.
Last spring, while motoring down a remote road in southern Utah, I ran into some folks that told me of a beautiful little slot canyon at the end of a sandy wash fifteen miles ahead. I followed their directions and after some wash board driving, parked the Xterra, grabbed my gear, and started hiking two miles through a narrowing ravine that stopped abruptly at the portal. With three hundred foot sandstone walls towering above me, I could see that countless floods had washed through the entrance of the five foot wide passage and I got worried.
Thunderstorms had plagued me all day and now they gathered in all directions. I had heard of people being swept to their deaths in such places and sometimes the torrents came from miles away. What to do? I started into the canyon which constricted quickly and dropped ten feet over large boulders which were obviously the remains of a waterfall. That was all I needed to see, and trusting my intuition, it convinced me to turn around and get the heck out of there. I snapped a few pictures but a blinding flash of lightning and rolling waves of thunder hastened my retreat and I high tailed it back towards the road as fast as I could. Forty five minutes later, opening the door and quickly throwing my pack inside the truck, the heavens let loose and it rained buckets for an hour.
