Portal

I don’t skip a composition because it’s famous. They get famous because they work, and if it’s my first time somewhere I want my own version — the light that particular morning, the small decisions that make the frame mine instead of a copy of everyone else’s.

This was 2018, our first trip to Arches, travelling in a converted van we’d rented out of Las Vegas. We were camped between Arches and Canyonlands and got up in the dark to be set well before sunrise. Walking an unfamiliar trail in the dark is always slightly tenuous, but there was enough blue hour to find the way. I tried a few positions at North Window before scrambling up onto a small ledge that lined Turret Arch cleanly through the opening.

Being first meant I had my pick of it. Two or three other photographers came up behind me and nobody crowded anybody — everyone found their own vantage or moved along. Once the sun was on the rock the hikers and selfie-takers came through, and none of them stayed long.

I held that perch for the whole thing. The clouds above Turret swept left to right the entire time the light was on it.