Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park

Author's Comments

There is a reason this landscape has been photographed into near-cliché, and there is also a reason I keep coming back. The mittens at sunrise in late October, when the air is cold enough to keep the dust down and the eastern light hits the sandstone at a low enough angle to separate every fin and shelf from its neighbor. That is the photograph. The wide one with all three formations in the frame is the photograph everyone has, including me, and there is no shame in making it again. The buttes are exactly as tall as they look. The horizon goes farther than you think. What I have learned across several visits is that the first overlook, the one right at the visitor center before you commit to the loop drive, is not a lesser view. It is the view. The seventeen miles of washboarded road will give you closer angles and Merrick Butte from the side and a few compositions you cannot get from above, but the iconic frame lives at the top. I shoot it first at blue hour, before the sun is up, when the silhouettes are clean against a sky that goes from indigo to peach in about twelve minutes. Then I drive the loop slowly. Winter is underrated here. Snow on red rock is one of the great photographic gifts of the Southwest, and it happens just often enough in January and February to be worth the gamble. Bring a tripod for the long exposures at dusk when the buttes go to silhouette and the sky still holds color. Bring more water than you think. The light here is generous but the wind is not.

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