Blue Mesa Badlands I

I found this composition early on during my stay, but I took three return visits to find a moment where the light was "just so", not so sunny as to have deep shadows, but not so cloudy as to lose a sense of light directionality and depth. It was worth the effort.

Climbing Lizard

Another petroglyph from along the Puerco River, this one (from a protected area) one of the most undamaged examples of a petroglyph in the wild that I've encountered.

Blue Mesa Badlands II

Blue Mesa inherits its name from the indigo color many of its formations display.

Sunset Glyphs

Dozens of glyphs (a few foreground, but many, many more along the cliffs background) appear in this tableau from along the banks of the Puerco River. The orange light of sunset saturates the already-orange color of the rocks to create a wonderful sense of color and excitement.

Sunset Rays

A relatively quiet sunset this evening from Pintado Point.

Badlands Layering

From a challenging overlook in the badlands areas behind the Teepees, this viewpoint provides an amazing example of the sheer breadth of color available in the park.

First Light across Lithodendron Wash

While the evenings at Petrified Forest were ever-changing with monsoon-season clouds, the mornings were usually quite similar, and later in my residency I spent a few taking a breath and simply enjoying them, often coffee in hand, from an overlook no more than 50 yards from my in-park residence. While I typically love a sense of sharp contrast and deep blacks in my images, here I'm fond of the sense and scale and distance this low-contrast, high-key image creates.

Petrified Log and Badlands

paintedhillselectricsky-12.jpg

Badlands Rainbow

I was carefully coming down this V-shaped valley (it's a rather tricky terrain to navigate), and turned briefly to note the rainbow perfectly aligned in the distance. Knowing that the rainbow was likely to be short-lived, I raced not only to make this image but to work out the aperture I'd need to hold everything in focus, but this image made the effort more than worthwhile.

paintedhillselectricsky-4.jpg

Teepees View

The colorful badlands are unimaginably strange at times, made more so by the distant edge of rain.

Badlands Detail II

A view from "on high", looking from the eastern edge of Blue Mesa down onto some of the unspoiled green-grey badlands below.  

Badlands Headwater

Another detail demonstrating the beautiful fractal patterns you find everywhere in the Badlands. This shot was taken from about head-height--the rocks are tiny pebbles, not boulders.

paintedhillselectricsky-14.jpg

The fractal complexity of the badlands is visible from on high, as you've seen in previous images, but also continues down to the most intimate scales. 

Sunset Band

A panoramic composition fit these cloud formations best.

Stream Detail, Lithodendron Wash

Translucent orange water fills the colorful Lithodendron Wash after thunderstorms, the purple hue to the mud poking out of the river here comes in part from its reflection of the blue sky.

Dancing Rain at Sunset

A telephoto image of backlit virga from Pintado Point.

Mt. Pilot Sunset

Mysterious clouds appear to swirl above this distant landscape.

Sunset Across the Painted Desert

Despite my decades of experience seeking out amazing light, I've never seen so painterly a flow of colors across the sky as this particular sunset.  Just amazing, the flow of hues.

Night Stroke

My last image from my weeks in the Petrified Forest, a quiet night scene with a hint of blue remaining at the top of the sky, a lonely bolt of lightning in the distance, and a wonderful sense of quiet.

Sunset Virga

I love the sunset color highlighting the flowing waves of rain here.

Power Stroke

The tendency of thunderstorms to arrive in the afternoon and stay through sunset made for many challenging but worthwhile photographic opportunities. 

Sunset Lightning

More sunset lightning. Photographing these storms during the day, or even at dusk was tricky because of the short exposure times possible, I used an optical trigger for my camera, a lot of patience, and a lot of "throwing out the ones that didn't work" to create these few strong images of the electric sky.

Approaching Storm, Pintado Point

In photographing the monsoon-season thunderstorms at Petrified Forest, this was probably one of the moments I felt most at risk. On top of, and at the edge of a mesa at Pintado Point, I could see the waves of rain, and lightning not far behind, approaching me quickly near sunset. A few frames after this shot I ran to my car, nearly threw my gear in as the first drops of rain began to hit, and got to much lower, safer ground as soon as I could.