Papago Park

Author's Comments

Papago is not a secret and Hole-in-the-Rock is not a discovery. By the time you arrive thirty minutes before sunset, there will be twenty other people inside the opening with phones raised, and the families will be trading places at the framed view of the city. I have made my peace with this. There is something honest about a place that gives itself this freely, and the photograph through the opening, with downtown Phoenix shrinking into the haze and the Camelback profile to the north, is iconic for a reason. But the buttes themselves are what hold me. In late November, when the angle has softened and the afternoon stretches long, the sandstone goes a color I can only describe as lit from within. Not red exactly. Closer to the color of a struck match in the second before it flares. Walk the loop trails away from the main parking lot and you will find smaller formations, less photographed, where you can work without an audience. The shadows in the shallow caves get deep and graphic. The saguaros stand in the foreground like punctuation. Winter mornings are the other window. The crowds at Hole-in-the-Rock are a sunset phenomenon, and at seven in the morning in January you can have the formation almost to yourself, with cold light coming in low from the east and the city still quiet below. The frame works in both directions. Most people only ever see it one way.

Gallery