Snow Mittens

On my first visit to Monument Valley, my wife and I stayed at the Navajo Lodge, expecting to wake up to the classic view: the valley glowing beneath a pristine morning sky. Instead, we woke to an early-spring snowstorm. Snow swept across the valley, softening the landscape and obscuring much of the familiar outline of the buttes. At the time, I remember being disappointed.

I didn't realize how lucky we were.

Winter storms in Monument Valley are usually brief, but when they arrive, they transform the place completely. Back home, I realized the storm had given me something far more unusual than the sunrise I had expected. There wasn't much color to begin with, so I processed the image in black and white, losing almost nothing while emphasizing the stark, graphic shapes of the buttes emerging through the snow.

It quickly became one of my favorite photographs from the trip—not despite the weather, but because of it. Atmospheric, moody, and unlike the Monument Valley photograph I had gone there expecting to make.