DESERT ELEMENTS

EARTH’S BARE BONES REVEALED

When we photograph the landscape, we are photographing the elements of life: earth, air, water, fire. Long before the periodic table of elements was defined, and we learned which elements combined to form rocks or air or water, ancient peoples understood these basic forces were essential to life. I love to photograph desert areas because these forces are laid bare, easy to observe, sense, and appreciate. The land and the plants growing on it show the wear of wind, the path of water. The horizons are often unlimited, giving the sky a prominence that many other landscapes don’t provide. The passage of time is evident everywhere, be it in the cracked mud of a drying streambed, or epochs of geologic times revealed in the layered stone of a desert canyon.

I often look for images that portray the elements in interesting ways, in ways that convey my awe for our planet. Depicting, in some symbolic way, the process of change is one way to approach this challenge. The ever-changing cycle of water involves all the elements. Rain falls onto the earth, the water flows into rivers and then oceans, the sun evaporates the water skyward again to form clouds, and rain falls again. Canyons are carved. Mountains wear down. Even though we all understand the basic process, thinking of how to depict it visually may provide you with ways to see new imagery.

In the desert, erosion is everywhere. Imagine the path a single drop of water might follow. Looking at the photograph on the previous spread, I can imagine that those clouds are building up into a downpour, and I visualize the rivulets gathering water into larger veins while cutting deeper into the ground. I didn’t stop to think about the elements or the water cycle, however, when I found this composition. I had been photographing intensely all morning, inspired by a bonanza of great subjects. It seemed every step I took presented me with a new image. It is the experience of discovery that energizes me to photograph and brings meaning to the artistic process.

This eroded hill stood isolated and lent itself to a simple combination of earth and sky. With a wide-angle lens, the curve of the hill was centered to give the sense that water collected atop the dome, then spread symmetrically in many directions. Crop off either side of the frame, and the image’s balance falls apart. A more obvious and classic image of water’s journey might be of the Colorado River cutting its way through the Grand Canyon. The image presented here is a more symbolic and less literal portrait of the water cycle.

The anthropologist and naturalist Loren Eiseley told of exploring the Platte River on the Midwest prairie in his book The Immense Journey. Musing upon the journey of water, he wrote, “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water . . . I thought of all this, standing quietly in the water, feeling the sand shifting away under my toes. Then I lay back in the floating position that left my face to the sky, and shoved off. The sky wheeled over me. For an instant, as I bobbed into the main channel, I had the sensation of sliding down the vast tilted face of the continent. It was then that I felt the cold needles of the alpine springs at my fingertips, and the warmth of the Gulf pulling me southward. Moving with me, leaving its taste upon my mouth and spouting under me in dancing springs of sand, was the immense body of the continent itself, flowing like the river was flowing, grain by grain, mountain by mountain, down to the sea. I was streaming over ancient sea beds thrust aloft where giant reptiles had once sported; I was wearing down the face of time and trundling cloud-wreathed ranges into oblivion . . . I was water.”

His scientific and impassioned understanding of the interconnectedness of all of nature led him to this insightful experience about which he writes so poetically. Having a sense of the big picture leads us to a better understanding of our photographic subjects, and therefore, we can make more insightful images. We must remind people over and over of nature’s beauty and of its frailty, remembering that the earth is a living, ever-changing system that sustains us. It is easy to forget, but we must not.

Aggregate Boulders on Siltstone Pedastal Formations | Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah | 2002

Corn Lily Leaves | Yosemite National Park, California | 2013