Slickrock and Shadow

Half and Half Rock:  Yellow and Purple Strips run through everything here! Half and Half Rock is an extension of the surrounding stripes running throughout Coyote Buttes South.  Not only is it amazing that the stripe runs exactly though the middle of the rock but it's mind-blowing that the same stripe continues across the ground and up onto the northern wall of sandstone.  It's like someone with purple chalk drew a wandering line through the whole landscape without regard to obstacles.  This small wonder is one of the first places the casual visitor to Coyote Buttes South discovers.  He sits right on the eastern border and the sandy trail leads to this general area from the parking lot.  If you seek, you will find.  If GPS coordinates help, then here it is:  N 36°57'39.3"  W 111°59'16.9". A literal rock star, this little guy has been photographed by some of the most famous landscape photographers.  Fatali flipped his photograph ...

Stone Monster watches over the Desert When stone imitate other things we call that a sculpture.  Some sculptures are natural and coincidental creature of nature while others are manmade.  These sculptures resembling reality are what gives the land our manmade names:  Rainbow Bridge, the Wave, Teepees.  Coyote Buttes South has a few sculpted sandstone figures that are named such as the "Control Tower".  I've heard of the "Witch's Hat" for the structure pictured above but from the side this looked like a creature with a long beak surveying all the desert for prey.  It's like an eagle or hawk but with a nightmarish lower body and bulk. Control Tower at Coyote Buttes South The wild sculpted desert

Color Streaks Through Stone Coyote Buttes South is an immense landscape with no trails.  There are few landmarks and only limited information.  I used Photographing the Southwest:  Arizona  to pick a sunrise location.  Beyond that I found information scarce.  Some online guide information and plenty of time looking at satellite images helped me decide where I wanted to go.  The problem is that something like this on satellite: Coyote Buttes South satellite Images with some GPS locations I programmed  before  my trip. Ends up looking like this in reality: Coyote Buttes images from the ground:  terrain looks much rougher in reality! As usual, I wanted to explore further afield in this awesome locale, searching for something novel and exciting.  I like that feeling of discovery so I left the tall teepees of Coyote Buttes South and crossed that sandy 1 mile to reach the far side of Cottonwood Cove.  Here I d...

Candy Rocks of Coyote Buttes South Real yet unbelievable is what I experienced while exploring Coyote Buttes South.  The lines and colors swirl in ways I could never imagine to be natural.  Yet this was truly the handiwork of Mother Nature, that creative maven I've come to admire.  This photo was taken at the same sunrise location as my previous post and this high outlook truly is the place for sunrise  in all this land.  I backed away from these rocks a bit, went with a wide 17mm tilt shift lens and shot several frames.  This lens allows me to stitch the frames together later and create a larger, wider vast landscape.  Just as I was doing this the sky brightened and changed from purple to blue, making this a most-colorful photo.  Enjoy the pastels of this incredible landscape!

Dawn glows from the sky and stone at Coyote Buttes South Sunrise at Coyote Buttes South is a highlight of the year for me.  Pink clouds and no wind made the silence unmistakeable as I stood over a world of swirling sandstone colors.  Coyote Buttes South is remote enough that this overlook has no name.  It should have a name like "inspiration point" or "artist's lookout" but few people make it here to the Cottonwood Teepees.   Coyote Buttes South colors take it up a notch from the North buttes.  Here they are mixed like saltwater taffy and run through rocks, ridges, edges and cliffs.  The colors run through everything!  It's amazing and might be hard to believe until you see it, touch the stone, take a breath and realize that you are not dreaming.   To get here, you've got to get a permit, drive the sandy road and walk about a mile.  The sand makes it slow.  Start before sunrise if you want to see this view because t...

Lacy Rocky Spire of Coyote Buttes North The "wave" is world-famous, one of the most in all landscape photography.  Pictures like the one below have made it an icon.  However, one wants to explore and discover.  That's part of our nature and certainly is a goal when I set out to photograph a location.  I want to find some place new, an undiscovered gem. Well, this time I hiked to Coyote Buttes North (the Wave) and did so in snow.  The beginning temperature was 17 degrees Fahrenheit.  The sun did come out and warm me up.  I can't complain too much.  Snow made everything different, making it a little more challenging to find any classic Southwest picture. I had heard of a cliff that had lacy rocks on the very top. However, the climb up to the top was on the north side of this mountain and covered with snow. Climbing up snow-covered slickrock is an exercise in persistence, gravity, friction and sliding down.  It took quite a while to ma...