Marble Canyon (Lees Ferry Area)

Author's Comments

The water at Lees Ferry in the hour before sunrise is the photograph. Everything else is preamble. The Colorado here runs cold and slow out of the dam upstream, and at dawn in November or early March the surface goes so still that the cliffs above seem to be growing downward as much as upward. The red is not the red of Sedona or Monument Valley. It is darker, more iron than rust, and at first light it warms by degrees until the whole canyon wall is lit and the river is holding a perfect copy of it. I work the boat ramp first because the geometry is simplest there, the river bending away and the cliffs stacking behind. A wide lens, a low tripod, and the patience to wait until the light reaches the water rather than just the rim. The reflection window is short. Once any breeze comes up the canyon, and it almost always does by mid-morning, the mirror breaks and does not come back. Lonely Dell Ranch is the second stop, and I treat it as a different shoot entirely. The old orchard and the weathered outbuildings sit against the Vermilion Cliffs in a way that asks for a longer lens and a later hour, when the light has climbed the rock face and the foreground is still in cool shadow. The Paria comes in muddy and the Colorado runs clear and where they meet you can see the line for a hundred yards downstream. This is a place most people pass through on their way to somewhere louder. Stay the night at the lodge. Be on the water before the sky is.

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