2011
Soft Canyon Light
I have celebrated New Year’s Eve 2011 and 2012 at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim, shooting the very last light of the year as well as the new year’s very first light. Winter light’s low angle muted with clouds creates such a soft palette, which when lucky enough to also have some snow, softens the canyon even further.
The cold and the silence seem to further soften the winter light, and without thermals, even the ravens are quiet, though still appearing to stand guard along the rim.
This is my ninth consecutive year capturing one of the world’s most iconic landscapes. In one glimpse you can see a third of the Earth’s history layered a mile deep into the canyon. To convey that feeling of elapsed time within single images encompasses my most thrilling moments as an interpretative landscape photographer.
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2010
The Light Within
My second Grand Canyon series concentrates on the world-within-a-world. By excluding direct sunlight from the frame, I explore intimate moments within the immeasurable space. Each crease and fold flows deeper, absorbing the high desert light that reflects every facet of the surrounding canyon walls.
A half mile below the rim, a world of buttes, towers and mesas emerge in every shade of the sedimentary palette — gray, tan, pink, red, orange, yellow and brown. The enormous scale of the canyon blends and diffuses their color and intensity according to distance and depth. In dramatic contrast, the 1.7 billion year old dark, veined granite gorge plummets another half mile as the Colorado River rushes through its belly. As the sun arcs across the canyon walls, Condors and Ravens soar the thermals.
2007
The Space Between
For the last thirty years, I have consciously evolved my camera strokes to best infuse the passage of time that turned the landscape into single ‘unstill life’ images. The Grand Canyon represents 1.7 billion years of limitless space, a giant vessel through which you can see the countless layers of time.
Looking down more than a mile from the rim to the Colorado River, the stunning array of sedimentary layers, colors, tones and shades represent advancing and retreating ocean coastline deposits of sandstone and shale. This iconic place, where the land so clearly recounts its own story, has become a pilgrimage for me as spiritual as any I have found.
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