Mingus Mountain Overlook

Author's Comments

There is a moment, driving up 89A from Jerome, when the road bends and the Verde Valley simply falls away beneath you. I have pulled over at nearly every one of those switchback turnouts at one point or another, and I can tell you that the upper pullouts, the ones closer to the summit, are where the photograph actually lives. What makes Mingus work is the layering. From 7,800 feet you are looking across a valley that drops nearly five thousand feet below you, and then your eye climbs back up the far side to Sedona's red rocks, and then keeps climbing to the San Francisco Peaks holding the horizon a hundred miles north. That is four distinct planes of distance in a single frame, and in late afternoon in October, when the air has gone clear and the sun is raking across from the west, those planes separate into bands of color that a camera can actually read. Pine green in the foreground. The pale gold of the valley grass. The red of Sedona catching fire. The blue of the peaks behind. Golden hour is the obvious answer and it is also the right one. But I would push you toward the half hour after, when the valley itself goes into shadow and only the far rocks and the distant peaks are still lit. That separation is what a long lens is for, and most people never wait for it. The Woodchute trailhead is worth the extra few minutes if you want a clean foreground. The roadside pullouts give you the view but the trees crowd in. Walk a little. The mountain rewards it.

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