I first became obsessed with Utah when I saw a picture of Delicate Arch in a book I was given as a child. Later, in college, I often traveled to Moab to explore the landscape, and I became hooked on southeast Utah – the beginning of a life-long obsession. I plotted to live on the Colorado Plateau where I could spend as much time as I could exploring and searching for natural beauty. Photography soon followed.  

A few artistic photography books about Utah already existed, but it didn’t take me long to realize that there was a lifetime’s worth of beauty to keep me going. To earn a living I had to travel elsewhere, but I can say that after visiting every state and 130 countries and seeing the world’s most beautiful places, Utah remains the most enticing and awe-inspiring. 

Along the way, as Bob Dylan says, “Things have changed.” Utah’s natural wonders are like living things, and they evolve with time. Photography records these changes and captures them for posterity.

Ironically, the greatest agent of change in the desert involves water. At Lake Powell, I recently photographed Gregory Natural Bridge, which was submerged for 50 years. However, as the water receded, I traveled down to Bullfrog to find it towering above the lower levels of the lake. For what was lost for decades suddenly appeared before me as if by magic. The bridge has since returned to its watery grave, but someday, I am certain, it will rise again. 

As a fan of ancient rock art, I’ve photographed it around the world, starting near home with the Moab Panel. This spectacular tableau was considered a work of art in Utah until the 1930s. Many visitors made the short pilgrimage from Moab to its location along the Colorado River.

To capture the ideal photo, I plan for a specific time of day and time of year. When I established the best time to shoot the Moab Panel, I took several images of it from left to right, thinking I could perhaps splice them together in the darkroom to make a bigger image.

Before I had this chance, vandals destroyed the panel. I mourned its loss and tried to forget about it. I just found it too painful.

In 2008, I found the slide transparencies I’d shot when I was 25 years old. I used modern digital technology to help me bring the art back to life by combining the three images into a panoramic. Now I have what I believe is the most detailed image of this psychedelic masterpiece. It doesn’t quite match standing in front of the real thing, but it’s a soothing memory. 

Often, you find something that was never lost in the first place. My friend and I were looking for a lost Native American ruin on the edge of a deep canyon. This occurred before GPS days, and after an hour of bushwhacking, we stumbled upon a large natural arch hanging over the slopes of the canyon.

It’s rare to find an unknown arch in Utah that other hikers, arch-finders and photographers haven’t already discovered.  After seeing my photo, dozens of experienced arch hunters scrambled to find it, but even with airplanes they never did. I haven’t tried to find it again myself, but I have the photo to prove its existence. For an explorer like me, you can’t imagine how exciting this is. I get to name it, too. The Lost Arch! I guess that makes us the raiders of the Lost Arch. 

These days I’m still hard at work shooting photos, and the more I go out, the more I am inspired to continue. Years of experience help, but I don’t really think about what I’m doing as much. I just let the subject’s beauty guide me. I’ve already found dozens of “lost” subjects in Utah that no one to my knowledge has ever photographed before. It is one of the biggest motivators to get up at 3 a.m. in the cold and dark and begin hiking with a heavy backpack in search of something
new, lost and wonderful.