Red Rocks Amphitheatre

Author's Comments

Most people come for the music. I come for the rock. Specifically for the way the sandstone catches the first hour of light on a clear winter morning, when the air at sixty-four hundred feet is so thin and dry that the red goes almost violent in saturation, and the monoliths throw long blue shadows across the seating bowl. The amphitheatre itself is the obvious photograph and I have made it many times, the rows curving down toward the stage with Ship Rock and Creation Rock framing either side. It is a real composition. It earns the cliche. But the photograph I keep chasing is the one from the Trading Post Trail, which loops around the back of the formations and gets you below the rock rather than inside it. From there the monoliths read as geology rather than venue, and on a winter afternoon with snow caught in the crevices and the Denver skyline a thin gold line on the eastern horizon, the scale of what you are standing under starts to make sense. Two hundred and ninety million years. The number does not mean anything until you are close enough to see the layering in the stone. Come before seven. The fitness classes start early and the parking lots fill faster than you would expect for a place this size. Winter is underrated here. The crowds thin, the light gets longer and lower, and the red of the sandstone against a cobalt Colorado sky is a color combination that does not really exist anywhere else I have photographed. Bring a wide lens for the amphitheatre and something longer for the rock detail. Both are worth the weight.

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