The southwest desert of the Colorado Plateau is one of the most sought-after locations for landscape photographers in North America and rightly so. With a higher concentration of jaw dropping parks than anywhere else in the US, you could spend the rest of your life here and still not see all of its wonders.

But winter brings a special element as the first snows blanket the red rock country giving its prominent features a fairytale look. This image made at Bryce Canyon National Park highlights its famous spires, called “hoodoos,” which are formed when ice and rainwater wear away the weak limestone that makes up the colorful Claron Formation. High on the Grand Staircase at an elevation of over 8,000 feet the air is especially cold and dry, and the park’s azure skies can often provide visibility up to 100 miles.

So if you’re thinking about a southwest road trip, consider the quieter winter months. With much fewer crowds and unique photo opportunities, you’ll be glad you did – just don’t forget the spare batteries and the cold weather gear.

Hiker looking down on the colorful Cedar Breaks Amphitheater, Cedar Breaks National Monument, Utah

There’s a popular climb at Joshua Tree called “Figures on a Landscape” that got me thinking about the connection between man and the environment. Not so much from an environmental standpoint (this could fill numerous posts), but photographically speaking. The climb is not long by Yosemite standards, but the lack of apparent holds on the colorful granite creates the illusion of climbers on a much larger stone palette.

Landscape photography can often portray the natural world in abstract even with the best intentions of  preserving its true form. It’s the nature of the beast – and that’s fine when you’re creating intentional abstracts or scale is irrelevant. Perspective control lenses and software can correct bending horizons and converging trees to create a more accurate representation if necessary, but there isn’t much else in nature that subscribes to our architectural way of thinking.

Now don’t get me wrong – that’s a good thing! Nature should be wild and chaotic and unpredictable, and in most cases that’s exactly what we’re hoping to capture. But there are times when this can also lead to confusion with our audience. When you’re trying to convey a sense of scale such as the immensity of the Grand Canyon or the vastness of the night sky the simple inclusion of a person in the frame can give your image an instant focal point and more importantly, a sense of perspective.

The Wave, Coyote Buttes, Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, Arizona

Compelling landscape photography is often comprised of one or more elements that make it stand out from the crowd. Magical light, richly saturated colors, and dramatic vistas can all make for great images, but sometimes we’re not rewarded with these sure-fire conditions even after the long hike or waiting out the inclement weather.

Fortunately there are other ways to create visually dynamic imagery when mother nature is not cooperating – namely your lens and your eyes. Perspective is a powerful tool that is controlled entirely by your choice of lens and framing. A wide angle lens with both excellent depth of field and field of view can be used to emphasize a foreground element such as a plant or rock within the context of its larger mountain or desert environment. In most cases this also creates an imaginary line directing the viewer’s eye across the frame, which in turn adds a sense of drama to the composition.

So the next time the conditions aren’t coming together the way you had planned and your landscapes are proving lack-luster,  try changing your perspective – and you might just see the scene in a whole new light.

Chaco Culture National Historical Park in New Mexico is the largest concentration of ancient pueblos in the southwest. At its center, Chaco Canyon was a major cultural center of the Anasazi or Ancient Pueblo People between AD 900 and 1150, and contains the most impressive ancient ruins north of Mexico.

Situated high on the Colorado Plateau at over 6,000 feet, the Anasazi were skilled masons and built fifteen major structures at Chaco. Called Great Houses, they included the impressive 650 room Pueblo Bonito (a world heritage site) using stone and timber brought in on a network of roads from up to 15 miles away. They also practiced astronomy and experts believe their buildings were aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles. Many of them remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.

No one knows exactly why this powerful culture suddenly disappeared in the late 12th century, but they left behind a lasting legacy in stone.

Petrified log sections on Blue Mesa, Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona

It’s hard to imagine that the vast desert that surrounds you as you whisk along Interstate 40 in Arizona was once a primordial swamp. During the Late Triassic period, about 225 million years ago, this area was a lush forest that was home to many large amphibians and early dinosaurs. The colorful Chinle Formation, which gives the Painted Desert its warm hues, also contains the sediments that have preserved the fossil trees, plants and animals of this ancient time.

At the center of this lunar landscape lies Petrified Forest National Park, which was set aside in 1962 to preserve the unique remains of this otherworldly place. In addition to its colorful badlands and fossil remains, the park also contains more than 600 archaeological sites, including petroglyphs and pit houses from some of its earliest pueblo inhabitants.

Spooky Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Utah

One of the largest yet least explored parks in the country, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a vast desert landscape of mesas, slot canyons, petrified sand dunes, archaeological treasures and American history. Divided by a single long ridge called the Kaiparowits Plateau, this remote region was the last place in the continental United States to be mapped and is a wonderful destination to find that desert solitude that Edward Abbey so passionately wrote about.

From the south, the Vermilion, White, Gray, and Pink cliffs rise to form the giant multi-hued terraces of the Grand Staircase. And to the east the Escalante Canyons are a labyrinth of geologic wonders slowly winding their way down to Lake Powell. Together these escarpments expose 200 million years of the earth’s history in a visual feast for the eyes, and contain the most continuous record of Late Cretaceous terrestrial life in the world.

For the photographer, the Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument is a sublime location where the posibilities are endless and the light, which seems to glow from within, is worthy most anytime of day. I’ve often said you could spend your whole life in southern Utah and not see it all, but that might just be true of this very special park. The temptation to try is always present.

Antelope Canyon on the Navajo Indian Reservation in Arizona is arguably the finest slot canyon in the American southwest and certainly one of the most photographed. Although beautiful to witness with the naked eye, these jewels of the desert really shine when a long exposure reveals the view our retinas can’t perceive – the subtle shades and hues of the sunlight as it plays on the wind and water sculpted sandstone.

Unlike most landscape photography, which benefits from the warm light of dawn or dusk, slot canyons are best photographed mid-day when the greatest amount of light penetrates the steep and narrow canyon walls.  This image was made with a 24mm wide angle lens and a 30 second exposure - no artificial lighting was used.

HDR (or High Dynamic Range) is an increasingly popular process of combining digital files to create an image that more closely resembles what the eye sees. It’s used primarily when the contrast in a scene exceeds the latitude of what the film or sensor is able to capture in a single shot.

Depending on the amount of contrast in the scene a series of up to 7 identical brackets one stop apart are combined, which represent all of the tonal value from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights. This image of False Kiva in Canyonlands National Park is very close to what I saw that evening, but the extreme contrast would have made it nothing more than a vision in my mind’s eye if not for HDR.

Photographic purists may balk at the use of such digital wizardry, but in fact it is not unlike the dodging and burning that Ansel Adams used countless times in the darkroom to achieve his magical prints. As he put it, “the negative is the score, and the print is the performance”. I concur, and feel that any photographic process which helps render a natural scene as it was witnessed is acceptable as long as it does not deceive the viewer or alter the truth.

The cliff dwellings of the American southwest are the most spectacular ruins north of Mexico. The Anasazi Indians (or ”ancient ones” as the modern Navajo call them) were the prehistoric pueblo culture that thrived in the Four Corners region between 900 and 1200 A.D. then mysteriously disappeared.

Many of their elaborate structures are well-preserved in national parks such as Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado, Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, and Canyon de Chelly in Arizona. From three story citadels perched precariously on canyon ledges like Square Tower House above, to the 500 room Great Houses of Chaco Canyon, these skilled masons left a legacy to rival the ruins of ancient Greece.

Archaeologists and scholars still debate what caused their sudden demise toward the end of the 12th century, but the stone handywork of the Anasazi remains a fascinating testament to the vision and tenacity of these ancient people.

Shooting water in all its endless variety is one of the creative pleasures of nature photography. From drops of dew reflecting a crisp autumn morning to the power of cascading falls frozen in time, the camera allows many unique perspectives of our most abundant resource that are seldom seen in a passing glance.

This image of Calf Creek Falls in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument was made on an overcast day with a long exposure of 20 seconds. The cloudy sky diffused the harsh mid-day light and saturated the colors of the mossy rock, while the slow shutter speed gave the falls a silky look.