Ever since John Ford’s epic Western movies made Monument Valley an iconic setting over 70 years ago, travel photographers have been shooting this vista from a bluff overlooking the scene, earning it a place on the list of the Greatest American Travel Clichés. There are several ways to leave the cliché behind and make an expressive interpretation of such a scene. Catching the glow of a setting sun on these buttes offers a way to blunt one cliché with another. But what if it is overcast, and there is no visible sunset? Leaving the overlook and going down into the valley might provide another fresh approach. But if logistics limit us to this particular overlook, what other options might be available? For me, the answer often comes through layering and juxtaposition. I walked up and down the overlook, which is quite expansive, looking for a strong foreground element I could compare to the buttes in the distance. I found it in a pair of massive red boulders, streaked with marks of time itself. Monument Valley is a geological textbook, created millions of years ago when the ocean floor cracked, land emerged from sea, and eventually became sandstone. The twin boulders anchor my image, speaking of geologic upheaval, and pointing to the buttes that rise in the distance. Using a 22mm wideangle focal length, I unite the boulders with the vista. My goal is not to make a pretty postcard cliché, but to tell an epic story of geological process. (As for that large bird that flies across the frame at the moment of exposure, I attribute that to pure chance.)

Upon my return from Monument Valley, I saw an item in the New Yorker Magazine about the new book “Ansel Adams in Color” which featured a previously unpublished shot Adams made using the left hand rock to anchor his color view of this scene in 1950. Adams waited for much better light on this rock than I found, and he moved in on it to powerfully merge it with the butte on the left. See: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2009/10/ansel-adams-in-color.html