Swirled Sandstone, Tiny Tree: Escalante Region, UT

After a long few days of hiking through Utah's intoxicating landscape, Terri and I stopped on the drive back to town to enjoy the setting sun over an enormous valley of fiery-orange sandstone.  As the sun sank lower, the hardened landscape almost seemed to groan under the weight of the colour.

I waited until the sun had disappeared before making this photograph in the pale light from the glowing sky.  I included the small tree as a sense of scale to ground the surreal patterns in the stone.  To the left of this photo, the sandstone bench ends, dropping hundreds of metres to the hard valley floor.

Swirled Sandstone, Tiny Tree: Escalante Region, UT, 2007

I have created two interpretations of this scene.  The Colour Photograph is a match to the original slide, while the Black and White Photograph is a second interpretation in monochrome.