The Mittens Overlook

Author's Comments

There is a reason this view is on every postcard in the state, and there is also a reason I almost talked myself out of going. The most photographed places have a way of feeling exhausted before you arrive. But the Mittens do not care about that. They have been standing there for longer than anyone has had a camera, and they will stand there long after, and the photograph you are trying to make has very little to do with originality and very much to do with showing up. Arrive in the dark. The railing fills quickly, and by first light there will be tripods elbow to elbow. I have been there in October and in February, and February is the one I would choose if I had to choose - the air is colder and clearer, the haze that softens the desert in warmer months has not yet built, and the red of the buttes against a winter sky goes almost violent at the right moment. That moment is short. Maybe ten minutes when the sun first catches the upper faces and the lower stone is still in shadow, and the whole scene stratifies into bands of color you did not expect. Shoot wider than feels right. The temptation is to compress the buttes with a longer lens, and that frame has been made ten thousand times. The wider composition that includes the foreground sage and the road dropping away is the one that holds up. Stay through the warm light. Do not leave when the crowd does. The half hour after sunrise, when most photographers are walking back to their cars, is often when the sky finally settles into the color you came for.

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