Photographs and text Copyright 2003 Tom Till
Produced by Tom Till and Duncan Mackie
and Tom Till Photography, Inc.
Duncan Mackie,
Mackie Visions, Moab, Utah
435-259-8383
Production assistance by
Caroline Mackie
Ann Carter
Marcy Till
Historic Images from Utah: Then and Now by Tom Till , photos used by permission from Utah State Historical Society

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Scans: Imacon Flextight Precision II Scanner
A Keynote presentation
Epson Powerlite 730c Projector
Cameras: Toyo Field Camera 4x5 AII, Linhof Master Technica
Lenses: Schneider, Rodenstock, Nikkor, in focal lengths 58,75, 90, 110, 120, 180, 210, 300, 360, and 600mm.
Tripod: Gitzo Mountaineer with Bogen pan/tilt head
Aerial photos made with Pentax 6x7 with 55, 90, and 110mm lenses
Film: Fuji Velvia, Provia 100F, Kodak 100 VS, Kodak Ektachrome 64
Processing: Photocraft, Inc., John Botkin

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Music by Scott August
Used by permission from "Distant Spirits"
Cedar Mesa Music, PO Box 691522, West Hollywood, Ca 90069

Supplemental music by Greg Hansen
Used by permission from "Wilderness"
Aubergine Records

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I. Brief history of the Southwest and the large Format Camera
II. The joys and agonies of using the big camera in the field
III. Strategies for Southwestern Photography
IV. Photography's role in preserving this endangered region

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Great Southwest Books by Phillip Hyde:
"Drylands," Harcourt, Brace, Javonovich
"Slickrock," Sierra Club
"This is Dinosaur," Sierra Club
"Navajo Wildlands," Sierra Club

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Phillip Hyde's work is characterized by subtlety and a lack of gimmickry. No colors in his imagery are ever exaggerated, and his desert images are unsentimental. Hyde considers sunrise and sunset shooting to be a cliché, but he comes closer than any other photographer to capturing in his work the feeling one gets on a hot midsummer day in the Colorado Plateau Wilderness.

Phillip Hyde also was a major contributor to the first photo book published to spotlight an impending environmental tragedy. The book, "This is Dinosaur," was published by the Sierra Club in the 1950's to rally support against dams in beautiful Dinosaur National Monument. Hyde contributed to many other Sierra Cub books, but his portfolio on the Utah Canyonlands with the writings of Ed Abbey, called "Slickrock," is my favorite photography book of all time, and it was instrumental in keeping big hotels and super highways out of Canyonlands National Park.
Arizona Highways has been a showcase for Southwest photography for decades. Ansel Adams contributed to its pages, but a father and son from Santa Barbara, California, would use the pages of this magazine, with its lush double-paged spreads which still rely, fortunately for me and other large format shooters, on 4x5 transparencies. Josef Muench, the patriarch of the Muench family, was particularly enamored with Monument Valley, visiting the area hundreds of times when only poor dirt roads lead to its unparalleled scenic wonders.

In the famous story, trading post owner Harry Goulding showed Josef's images of the valley to movie director John Ford, who shot "Stagecoach," the great Western movie in the valley, the first of thousands of feature films and commercials to be made there. Tagging along with Josef in those years was his son, David, who according to the film " Images of Arizona," made a decision to become a photographer 51 years ago while accompanying his father to the uberlookout of Monument Valley on Hunt's Mesa.

The impact of David Muench and his 4x5 Linhof Master Technica on Southwestern photography has been monumental and unprecedented. Richard Maack, Photography Editor of Arizona Highways says it all:

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Slide quote:
"Often, when we conjure images of the American West, we see that landscape through the eyes of David Muench, so powerful are his images. His influence on the legion of color landscape photographers that followed him reinforces that vision through their devotion to his subjects and photographic style. Muench's dramatic flair, trademark near-far style, and love of light and landscape created unforgettable scenes that have become an important part of America's visual identity" Richard Maack. Photography Editor Arizona Highways Magazine.

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David now lives in New Mexico, in the heart of his beloved desert country. Certainly no one except Ansel Adams has been more of an advocate through his work, for the 4x5 camera, than David Muench.

I and other photographers have taken two cues from David Muench that I think are very important. First, David works in bad weather a lot. Contrary to what one might think, the 4x5 is really a good bad weather camera. With no electronics to get wet, it can withstand a lot of rain and snow. Just don't put the camera in the oven to dry it out as I did with my first one in 1977. That doesn't' work too well. Secondly, David's work ethic is second to none and is continually inspiring. In a recent interview he complained that by autumn of that year he'd only been in the field 200 days, and was antsy to get back to work for the rest of the year.

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Slide: Great Southwest Photo Books by David Muench
"Plateau Light," Graphic Arts
"Utah" (second portfolio), Graphic Arts
"New Mexico" (second portfolio), Graphic Arts
"Desert Images,"

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Another New Mexican, Eliot Porter, deserves the title, I believe, of the first color nature photographer. Kodak made its first versions of Kodachrome available to him, and again using a 4x5 Linhof Camera, Porter, an East Coast refuge living in Tesuque, soon began to use the film to shoot bird photographs. The very idea of shooting any kind of wildlife, let alone birds, with a 4x5 is amazing to me, but later Porter began to train his camera on the Southwestern landscape.

The inventor of the large format closeup, Porter was a contemporary of Adams, born at almost the same time, and passing away at almost the same time. I think it's unfortunate that Porter is not nearly as famous among the general public as Adams, because for colorists, I feel his work is more important. Echoes of Porter's work can be seen in almost all large format color photographers working today. These words are the most important photo credo I've ever read, and I think that any photographer who follows them will be successful in some way.

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"Photography for me is a creative art. It is not simply an illustrative or interpretive medium. An artist creates according to his deepest feelings--his emotional inspiration. He cannot invoke these feelings, together with their fulfillment in a objective work, on order. It has to come from within himself. I try, not always with success, to photograph only what stimulates a recognition of beauty, either that which is intrinsic in the objects of nature or is a manifestation of the wonderful relationships of things in the natural world."
Eliot Porter, From the "Color of Wildness," Aperture Books

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Words to shoot by, for sure. This message of loving your subject resonates deeply with me, and when I teach workshops, it is perhaps the number one idea I try to impart. This love is the wellspring of inspiration that keeps me going when my truck slides into the ditch in the dark on drenched, abandoned forest service roads, when I go weeks in the field and hike dozens of miles without a decent image to show for my work, when a cloud of Colorado Plateau no-see-um gnats reduces my ears to bloody stumps, or when my legs are ravaged by oozing open wounds gained from the tiny tickle of one poison oak leaf.

Besides his great photographs, I think Porter had two other wonderful qualities that inspire me and other large format photographers. First, his camera was always in service of environmental causes, even lost causes like his great work "The Place No One Knew." In this wonderful book his images depicted the singular but doomed landscape of Glen Canyon in Utah, as the Grand Canyon. Secondly, Porter was very interested in creating great prints of his work, working long hours in the darkroom or supervising others who printed his work in the back-breaking scientifically anal-rententive process of making dye-transfer prints. Porter felt as I do, that published photos are not enough, and that the one-on-one communication between a good print and its viewer is an important part of the photographic process. I was very lucky to meet Porter before his death. He was the essence of patrician class and affability. That "class" can be seen in his imagery and in its innovation and his devotion to the 4x5 camera. As critic Rebbecca Solnit says in "The Color of Wildness," Porter's primary legacy may not be photographic, but something far more pervasive: a transformation of what we see and what we pay attention to."

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God is in the detail.

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A 4x5 transparency carries along with it a great deal of information--about a gigabyte and a half I'm told. The photos I make, have a world of information that just isn't there on "miniature" images. This detail comes in handy, as everyone knows, when large reproductions are the end result. When I look at books, magazines, or calendars where my photography appears alongside the work of 35mm shooters, regardless of the images themselves, I love the look of rich detail I see I in my work that I don't see in theirs.

Sometimes it's subtle, but it's still there. In making 30x40 prints for my gallery, the importance of the large transparency as the starting point cannot be underestimated, and I believe it is a crucial component in selling large prints to the public. Detail is also important, I feel, in the attempt to bring those who look at our photographs into the experience we have had in the field. If there's more detail, there's more experience to share. This ability to recreate a natural moment is the crowning glory of the large format camera and the reason for its continued popularity.

As a person who makes his living with a camera shooting nature subjects, I can also attest to the continued popularity of large transparencies with some editors. Although times are changing. and this is less important with many, I think maybe the pendulum will swing back someday to a resurgence of appreciation for the classic look of a richly detailed, saturated, large format image.

Besides this most important of the big camera's capabilities, a fewer lesser attributes make it even more appealing. Chief among them is the ability of the camera, through the use of its back and front tilts and the wonderful sounding "Sheimpflug Rule, " to easily maintain focus from subjects very close to the camera, on to infinity. Combined with the detail of the 4x5, this near/far style is a magical way to put the viewer right into the scene. Though 35mm and medium format cameras are available with this feature, it comes as standard equipment on all large format cameras.

Other important benefits of the 4x5 are the rise and fall feature, which allows me to avoid the distortion of trees and rock spires when the camera is shooting upwards, the control that comes from shooting individual sheets of film instead of rolls, and the aerobic workouts I get from carrying a 50-pound pack of camera gear into the wilderness. As for the 4x5 being antiquated, I someday expect to be using a digital back that will allow me the same cyber-advantages that 35mm users now enjoy.

No discussion of Large Format Nature Photography would be complete without a word of warning about the drawbacks inherent in the process. These include, but are not limited to, cost, weight, film that must be loaded and unloaded by hand, no zoom lenses, no in-camera metering, no auto focus, an image that must be composed upside-down and backwards, and the requirement that a tripod be used for all work. Once the images have been processed, they must be mounted individually by the photographer or fortunately in my case, by people who work for the photographer, and scanning 4x5's requires a larger machine which takes a longer time for each scan, and more time to clean the larger images.

I've found that with 25 years of practice just about all these hurdles can be overcome. For example, looking at an upside down image is totally second nature for me now. Somehow my mind has compensated for what I see on the ground glass and "automatically" rights it to a normal image. This makes sense, since I understand our eyes, having the same characteristics as other lenses, also take in an upside-down backwards image, and our brains act a single lens reflex camera, flipping everything around to let us see things as they really are. Perhaps it is easy for the brain to simply process the lens image "as is" after enough practice.

I also have become very adept at setting up and shooting my 4x5 in a very short period. It seems to me I run into two kinds of shots in landscape photography: there's the one where I have a good subject, but I may wait hours for the light to be right, and there's the situation when I must set up and shoot in literally seconds. Constant practice with the big camera can make large format shooters almost as fast 35mm photographers.

Perhaps one of the biggest drawbacks of the 4x5 is the damage done to a photographer's body, after a lifetime of carrying around a 50-pound backpack. A number of professionals in my age bracket have been forced to modify their mode of shooting, or abandon the profession altogether. One very well-known 4x5 photographer was forced to visit the doctor after his knee pain became unbearable. After a look at the x-rays and MRI scans, the doctor returned to the patient with the following incredulous question: "What the hell do you do for a living?" That photographer is now, unfortunately, mostly retired. Another professional friend of mine, after having surgery on both knees, had to begin shooting projects that required only a short walk from the car. At 53, my knees and feet hurt from time to time, but I've so far been fortunate enough that massage and copious amounts of Ibuprofen have taken care of the problem.

With those warnings in mind, two books, both of which I wish were available to me 25 years ago, should be required reading for those interested in 4x5 nature photography. Jack Dykinga's "Large Format Nature Photography" is the best book ever done on the subject, although I talked to Jack recently and he was regretting ever doing the project. It seems somebody had given the book a nitpicking review on the Amazon website, and worse, a reader had sent an entire collection of De Lorme Maps to Jack, with instructions that he mark the locations of all the photos in the book on the maps.

Another great book, "Photographing the Landscape," by my friend John Fielder from Colorado, has a little broader focus, but works from the standpoint of a 4x5 user. The two books tend not to repeat information, so they do a good job of complimenting each other.

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Slide:
Sources of information about Southwestern subjects:
De Lorme Maps
"Photographing the Southwest," Volumes 1, 2 by Laurent Martres, Graphie International, Inc.
Topo maps
Guide books
The internet/satellite photos
Guides, Native American or Anglo
Magazines on the Southwest: "Arizona Highways Magazine," "Durango Magazine," "New Mexico Magazine," "Lake Powell Magazine," "Sedona Magazine"
The Weather Channel
Scouting(by myself and others)

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The New Mexico spires I mentioned before are fairly typical of how I might work in locating and shooting an original subject. I had seen the spires referenced on a De Lorme map, but I had not seen any photographs of them before. Using Expert GPS on the internet, a great program that allows me to view satellite imagery of new places I plan to visit from above, I was able to locate the pinnacles and plan an approach to them. From what I saw they faced south and would be great late fall sunset subjects, but the satellite image showed no roads or trails approaching them directly.

A check of a climbing site on the internet showed that climbers had been visiting the towers, and gave some directions on driving to the sites which later proved erroneous. Because I wanted dramatic clouds in the shot, I waited until a five-day storm was ready to move east. I took my cues from the Weather Channel and was able to time my visit exactly, find one of the spires easily, and spend two hours shooting the varying light, and finish with an image of a fresh subject.

"Photographing the Southwest," Volumes 1,2 by Laurent Matres are a great resource for photographers with a limited knowledge of the area, and the books also divulge a few out-of-the-way places and lesser known attractions. One important feature of the book is information about how to apply for photography permits for places where they are required, like the Coyote Buttes area. Beside these guidebooks, which are specifically targeted to photographers, there are dozens of other hiking and travel guides on the Southwest that can lead you to prime locations.

From time to time, I use guides. For someone with little knowledge of a new area, guides can be a godsend, and in some places they are required. Antelope Canyon, a favorite of photographers on the Navajo Reservation, requires a permit and a guide, and has become an overcrowded cavern stuffed with photographers and tripods. Thousands of photographers seem content to shoot the same images there over and over and over again. When I first visited the area in the 1970's it was totally deserted and a wonderful place to photograph, but even by 1980 the Sierra Club Calendar editor told me he never wanted to see another slot canyon photo again. Still the subject has great appeal, and one way to avoid the crowds is to hire a guide in Page, Arizona, to visit other wilderness slot canyons, like Canyon X. There are also rumors that the Navajos are going to allow some of the other wilderness slots which are presently closed, to open up to visitation in the near future.

Any shooting outside the Valley Drive in Monument Valley requires a guide--the same is true for Canyon De Chelly outside the roads and the trail to White House Ruin. Unfortunately, the rules in Monument Valley have changed recently, and not for the better. Though the situation is in constant flux, previously photographers were allowed to take guides in their own vehicles, drive and hike where they wanted, and work sunset and sunrise hours with impunity. Called a "walk-on" by the guides, this system has been forbidden in favor of group tours that don't allow the freedom for individual photography. This is a sad situation that has made serious photography in the Valley difficult except during photo workshops, at this time mainly run by Arizona Highways.

One way to get "different" and unusual images of the Southwest is to eschew bald, blue sky days and exploit some of the interesting weather and cloud formations that occur at certain times throughout the year. Although shooting in bad weather gives the photographer more chance for failure, it also can give a world of opportunities that can include fog, snow, black and blue chiaroscuro clouds to contrast with the landscape, wonderful sunrise and sunsets, duststorms, rainbows, and lightning.

Also, since air quality in the Southwest has, in my anecdotal opinion, decreased markedly in the last 25 years, storms are the scouring agent that clean the atmosphere and bring the brilliant clarified light we all prize. When I was talking to David Muench about our workshop this week, I mentioned the possibility of bad weather, and he came up with the mantra that I live by. "Bad weather means good pictures." Living in the Southwest is certainly an advantage, since I can watch storm movements on the Weather Channel and plan trips to take advantage of stormy weather.

Unfortunately, at the present time, much of the Southwest is suffering through at least its second year of drought, which can have a very deleterious effect on nature and landscape photography. The problem begins with a lack of clouds to use as subjects, or as controllers of light, but also impacts wildflower blooms, waterfalls, life-giving springs in the backcountry that allow hikers to fill their canteens, and hotter days that make hiking and traveling dangerous.

In a normal year, each season brings with it photographic opportunities. Winter storms and snow can start as early as October here, depending on elevation. Winter is a wonderful time to visit the Southwest for a photography trip. Most of the crowds are gone, and the winter storms bring with them mood and mystery that meshes well with desert subjects. Although snowstorms in the high desert can be rare some years, the contrast of white snow and red rocks is a spectacular tableau.

Spring brings wildflower blooms if the winter rains have been kind, and is by far the windiest time of year. The 4x5's major weakpoint is windy weather. The bellows tend to act as a big sail, and the long exposure times usually required with the camera make subject movement a real problem. Patience is the key, since wind in the Southwest rarely blows constantly, but will abate eventually. A common practice for me in spring is to wait hours for the wind to drop to an acceptable level, which may work out to one shot per hour at times. When Fuji creates 400F film in 4x5 I will be the first in line to make use of that product

May is perhaps my favorite month, when grasses are green and the last storms come and go. Most of the time June is the clear, hot month--the perfect time to enter slot canyons with lesser danger of thunderstorms and flashfloods. In July, the monsoon rains begin, bringing another round of flowers, flashflood waterfalls, and amazing skies. This regime continues through September, another spectacular month, with aspens and maples turning brilliant colors in the higher terrain into October, and cottonwoods turning yellow thoughout the area in November .

Travel in the Southwest has its own unique challenges. The much-maligned sport utility vehicle or 4-wheel-drive truck or van is a great tool for negotiating the often boggy or icy backroads of the region. Many times I can't even get out of my driveway without one. For a basic kit when traveling by car and camper, I carry my complete 4x5 outfit in a Lowe-Pro Super Trekker Backpack. This includes a Toyo Camera, and 75mm, 90mm, 110mm, 180mm, 210mm and 360mm lenses in Gnass lens holders fitted inside the pack. (show pack) Also in the pack are a Pentax digital spotmeter, Toyo loupe, a heavy Calumet focusing cloth, cable releases, film in regular film holders inside Gnass cases, and readyload film with readyload holders. I also carry the following filters in both screw in and Lee system forms: Tiffen 812, Tiffen Warm polarizer, Singh Ray Galen Rowell three-stop .9 soft Graduated ND filter, Singh Ray .9 Daryl Benson filter, and a true 3-stop GND specially made by Singh Ray (more about these later).

I also have, inside the camper, a Linhof Master Technika with a 600mm lens for telephoto work, and a 58mm wide angle lens for the Toyo. The 58mm will work on a normal lensboard with the Toyo, if care is taken to raise the lens and drop the camera bed down to get it out of sight. I use a center filter for this lens. Other equipment in the camper includes a Fuji 6x17, a Pentax 6x7 with a full complement of lenses, from 45 to 500, and a Nikon with extreme wide angle, telephoto, and macro capabilities. A large stash of Fuji Velvia, and Kodak 100 VS, my present films of choice, are also inside.

As important as my camera gear are my wide-brimmed hat, sunscreen, water, and appropriate clothing. I consider outdoor clothing and footwear to be as important as my camera equipment, and I spare no expense on Patagonia outdoor gear and Vasque boots. At all times I need to be either as cool, warm, or dry, as possible.

Walking is the key to exploring the true heart of this great desert landscape. As I said, I use a Lowe -Pro Super Trekker as my main day-hike backpack. For overnight backpacks I use a larger Gregory backpack to hold camera gear and camping equipment.

On many hikes over the years, I've used llamas as pack animals, finding them a wonderful way to penetrate deeply into the wilderness quickly and easily. I take two llamas who carry about 70 pounds each, enough for all my camera and camping gear and a weeks' worth of provisions.

Slot canyons and water-filled gorges require a separate strategy all their own. To keep my camera gear dry in these narrow defiles, I put the equipment in a watertight river bag inside my large backpack, and I often take an inflatable air mattress to float the gear across open water stretches. I also use a wet suit and at times a life jacket to negotiate cold pools that still can be numbing when outdoor temperatures push into the 100's.

I think a warning about some of these killer pools is in order. A few years ago I did a backpack trip into a beautiful and remote canyon filled with waterfalls and plunge pools. The long, dry approach to the canyon left me hot and tired, so I jumped into the first small pool I encountered, which was about chest deep and just big enough to fit two or three people. Immediately I knew the water was unnaturally, even shockingly cold.

So cold, in fact that I immediately wanted out, as a felt my legs beginning to collapse from the intense chill. Moving my legs and trying to climb out was impossible because of the slick limestone rock of the pool, which was also moss-covered and concave in shape. My attemptsall ended in failure as I slid back into the demonic waters, each time less strong than the time before. Fortunately, my companion was within earshot, and he was able to easily pull me out. Had I been alone, the newspaper headline would have read

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Slide:
" Local Photographer Dies of Hypothermia on 112 Degree Day"

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Since that time I am very careful about getting into even the most timid looking desert pool, no matter how hot, dusty and brain-fried I may be.

Since the river corridors of the Southwest traverse such unparalleled scenery, I became a serious river runner over 25 years ago, using my own raft to travel through the Grand Canyon on big rivers like the Colorado, or a two-man inflatable kayak to explore smaller rivers like the Escalante. Letting the river do all the work of carrying you and your camera into the heart of the desert wilderness is a great way to go, although there are dangers involved.

In 1985, I rowed my own boat through the Grand Canyon for the fifth time at a very demanding and dangerous high water level. All my camera gear, as on every trip, was packed in watertight metal army surplus "ammo boxes" to protect it from the giant waves of the river and the strong possibility of a boat flip. Near the Inner Gorge of the Canyon, I hiked in a downpour to a small ruin surrounded by the majestic mile-high canyon walls on all sides, hoping for some clearing and a stormlight sunset shot.

Ensconced in a small cave, similar to ones I've waited out storms all over the Southwest, I waited until I was rewarded with a brilliant sunset and a double rainbow arching magically right into the river. I couldn't believe my luck, but now I had to negotiate some of the fiercest rapids in North America to get the image safely home. Many of the other boatmen were having trouble, though, and we began flipping boats almost every day. My luck ran out in Crystal Rapid, a terrifying maelstrom that kept me up all night worrying. Perhaps my lack of sleep was the cause of my flip in Crystal which lifted my 18 foot boat, weighing probably a ton, completely out of the water and back on top of me. After a horrible swim through the rock garden at the foot of the rapid my boat and I were saved by my friends.

After the rescue, and the righting of the boat, my thoughts turned to the precious cargo in my rocket box, the sheets of Ektachrome 64 that held the rainbow. As I opened the can, I could see that a tiny amount of water had entered, but my film, safe in ziplocks, was saved. I did not know at the time that I would flip again on this trip in Mighty Lava Falls. ( I've flipped only three times in my life and two were on this trip).

Again the film was safe. Thanks goodness. I was quitting my job as a high school teacher that year, and I needed every good image I could create to help my transition from part-time to full-time photographer. Later that year, the image was chosen as the cover of a wonderful new book about the Colorado Plateau, and it appeared in Arizona Highways and in many other publications. If anyone tells you luck is not a big part of successful large format landscape photography in the Southwest, they are mistaken.

A couple of other forms of desert travel deserve brief mention as I use both on occasion. I am not a great climber, but I have friends and a daughter who are, so I've done a lot of shots that require assistance from ropes. Also, Lake Powell, the sadly drowned remnant of Glen Canyon, provides access to a huge portion of Southern Utah, so I've used rented power boats many times to explore that area.

Besides the rigors of travel in this vast desert outback, photography in the American Southwest brings with it a number of unique problems. Sand and dirt are always a problem here, and photographers must take great effort to keep their equipment clean. With my 4x5, I use Fuji and Kodak preloaded Readyload and Quickload film to fight dirt. Even though the holders are an environmental disaster with a huge amount of waste involved, I would have a huge amount of wasted film if didn't use these hermitically sealed sheets of film. I buy new film holders every time I go on an important trip as they are very prone to breakdown, and I always carry two with me, and sometimes three.

When shooting in the deep canyons and spectacular topography of the Southwest, I find graduated neutral density filters to be a godsend. I estimate that I use these devices on about 1/3 my shots. I like the Lee Filter System, but I find that I most commonly use a special true three stop grad filter made especially for me by Singh Ray Filters. I determined that if I meter a .9, like the Galen Rowell Filter, a supposed three stop filter, with my spot meter, I get only two true stops of ND, when most times in the deep canyons I need at least three. I find these filters work well with a 4x5 camera, although I may need to move them up and down a few times to find the right place. When it's impossible to tell a filter has been used, I feel I've utilized the tool successfully.

Scouting an area is a technique I use constantly. When I arrive at a location, I size it up for how it will change and look througout the year as the sun's angle changes through the course of a day and throughout he seasons. I think about how snow or fog or the moon might work to enhance the image. One of my most important strategies is to return to a place often or to stick around there until conditions are more favorable.

I have a mental and a physical list of photo ideas that I'm waiting to pounce on when the time is right. One of my favorite mental exercises is to brainstorm as I travel or hike or whenever I have free time, about shots I might be able to plan out and accomplish eventually in the field. Sometimes I have tried for years to get an image I have in my mind to materialize in reality. At these times I often wish I was a painter.

At other times, a sought after prize finally comes along. I have hiked to Delicate Arch perhaps 60 or 70 times hoping to capture a rainbow with the arch. Most times I use the 3 mile round trip as a conditioning trip and get nothing. One evening though, in rain so cold and driving that, most of the hundreds of normal summer visitors had gone, a rainbow did appear. I was flabbergasted and almost unable to work. Even using an umbrella didn't keep water off my lens, as the wind howled and the skies opened and the the sun shot through from the West. A number of French tourists stood in the arch, but some harsh words in German from a friend of mine who was also there sent them scurrying. Unfortunately, the image was a bit soft because of the rain drops on the lens, so I have to keep up my quest for the perfect Delicate Arch rainbow.

As for the special light that appears in many of my pictures, each success story belies the hundreds of sessions where the pyrotechnics of nature I'm hoping for didn't happen. But, I've also learned not to give up, and when I'm at a location where other photographers are around, I find that most give up much too early. They take their shot when the light is bad, and go for cocktails, leaving the good stuff for me. It's even worse in the morning. As my friend Jeff Foott often says, " Most photographers are late for work."

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Areas endangered by potential oil and gas exploration and drilling:
Roan Plateau, Colorado,
San Juan National Forest Roadless Area, Colorado
Vermillion Basin, Colorado
Otero Mesa, New Mexico
Book Cliffs/Uintah Basin, Utah
Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument, Utah
Utah's Redrock Parks and Wildlands, Utah

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Other environmental concerns in the Southwest include the lack of permanent designation of wilderness in Utah, New Mexico and Colorado where virtually no redrock wilderness exists. Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is in danger because of the theft of its live-giving water to both Eastern and Western Slope Colorado users. National Park status for Dinosaur National Monument and the San Rafael Swell areas of Utah have been held hostage by local groups and Republican lawmakers who pander to off-road vehicle groups and energy companies.

The slow destruction of the air quality in the Southwest is the environmental problem that effects photographers right where we live. We are beginning to see a large number of hazy days that did not exist 25 years ago. These conditions could be due to factors as divergent as dust blown into the area from China, and the exhaust of hundreds of thousands of new cars from runaway development in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Tucson. Coal-fired power power plants and the dust stirred up by thousands of off-road vehicles may be other culprits.

Besides all these problems, photographers coming to the area now have a challenge I never faced in my early carefree, unrestricted good-old-days of photography. Over the decades, serious photography has become one of the major activities pursued by visitors to the region. As such, we have have an increased responsibility to leave the land as we find it, behave ourselves around other photographers and visitors, and place the integrity of the land above our desire to create images.

After you leave this magnificent place, you can provide a valuable service with your money and your photographs and help insure its survival as a viable ecosystem by supporting national and local environmental groups who fortunately lavish a great a deal of needed attention on the preservation of our spectacular deserts.

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Slide:
Environmental Groups Working in the Southwest

The Sierra Club
The Wilderness Society
The Natural Resources Defense Council
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
The Nature Conservancy
The New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
The Grand Canyon Trust
Redrock Forests

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This is far from an exhaustive list, but they and other groups can be easily contacted via the internet.

The good news is they're making 4x5 cameras lighter. If they can continue to innovate this was way, perhaps my legs and back can keep me shooting with the big camera into my golden years. For me, the American Southwest is a constant challenge, a constant muse, a constant inspiration, and a constant source of fun. I hope to continue as long as my legs will carry me, with my 4x5 in tow, following the canyon to the beautiful and unknown secrets that lay just around the next canyon bend or just over the next canyon's edge.