Friends of Arizona Highways Photo Workshops

The following story from the September 2008 issue of Arizona Highways is presented here with permission.

Northern Exposures
Last October, 14 people from around the country piled into a bus and headed north for
a five-day photography workshop. The workshop, one of many sponsored every year
by Friends of Arizona Highways, focused on Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly.
We have no idea how many photos were taken, but we were able to snag a few from
one of the participants, along with 1,705 words about her experience.

Text & Photographs by Participant Ann Collins

Monument Valley’s sculpted buttes and flat-topped mesas deepened to a burnt orange as the sun dropped behind me. This was the real West — the West I’d seen on movie and television screens. Awestruck, hardly believing I was actually there, I felt as if I were on a pilgrimage, paying homage to director John Ford, actor John Wayne and the landscape itself. I’d come from San Diego to make photographs of my own, and found an ideal first subject in the Mitten Buttes and their sidekick, Merrick Butte.

That day, shortly before sunset, 14 of us from across the United States, participants in a five-day Friends of Arizona Highways Photo Workshop to Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly, set up tripods and cameras at the visitors center overlook. Despite the mid-October chill numbing our fingers, we clicked away, shooting the ageless wind- and water-carved monuments jutting up from the Colorado Plateau.

Our instructor, J. Peter Mortimer, a professional photographer and former photo editor at Arizona Highways, roamed around us offering guidance on composition, and pointing out interesting subjects to use in the foregrounds of our wide-angle shots.

Peter’s instruction had begun just outside of Phoenix that morning when he’d turned our 27-passenger bus into a traveling classroom. The miles and time sped by as he answered our questions. Digital “shooters” outnumbered those using film, but we soon learned that the basic principles of photography apply to either process.

Most of us had joined the trip with specific goals in mind — from Judy Berthiaume, a former antiques store owner who just wanted “to take a few pictures,” to me,
who wanted to make photos worthy of being published in Arizona Highways.

Gene Spriggs, retired from the information-technology field and utterly determined to take beautiful pictures of our destinations, brought seven past issues of Arizona Highways with him. “I have them going back 16 years,” he said. As soon as the Friends Web site had published our itinerary, Gene searched his collection for related articles and photographs. He didn’t usually take the issues to our shoots, though. “I don’t have time to look at them. I have enough trouble figuring out my settings.”

Class let out for lunch when our bus stopped at Cameron Trading Post, a restaurant and sprawling store filled with Navajo Indian rugs, Hopi kachinas, sand paintings, silver jewelry, pottery and trinkets. I watched a Navajo woman weaving a large rug of such intricate design that I asked if more than one person had worked on it. She answered proprietarily, “It’s my art.” It will take her a year to finish making the rug.

The restaurant, with its huge stone fireplace and pressed-tin ceiling, serves American fare and Navajo dishes, like tasty Navajo tacos — frybread topped with chili beans, green chiles, cheddar cheese, shredded lettuce and chopped tomatoes.

After lunch we hit the road again, and reached Monument Valley by late afternoon. Our accommodations at Goulding’s Lodge stair-stepped up the base of Big Rock Door Mesa, where in 1924 Harry Goulding and his wife, “Mike,” established a home and trading post. During the Depression, the Gouldings played host to John Ford, whom they’d lured from Hollywood with photos of the spectacular landscape now immortalized in his Western films.

The former trading post is a museum today. Visitors from around the world peruse items from the Gouldings’ home — old movie posters, photographs of the actors on location, and thank-you notes from Ford, John Wayne and others.

We had nearly two full days to explore Monument Valley and its changing light. Having a photography instructor who is intimately familiar with the area proved a huge advantage.

As we bounced and swayed in the backs of Goulding’s tour trucks driving the dark 17-mile dirt road winding through Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, Paul Lampert, a radiologist, dubbed our trip “an adventure photo workshop.”

We were headed to the towering spire called Totem Pole to greet and photograph the sunrise. Partway there, Su Labashosky, our escort from the Friends group, a nonprofit organization founded as an auxiliary to Arizona Highways, asked if there was anything she could do to improve our trip. Only one request was made: “Could you get us some clouds for the sunrise?”

Su’s powers didn’t extend to creating a more dramatic dawn, but no one complained. The sun’s warm, golden glow feathered across buttes, mesas and the whittled rock formations of Yei Bichei and Totem Pole. Wind-rippled dunes seemed alive as shadows emerged from the sun’s low angle.

Intent on capturing nature’s beauty on film or sensor, we were an enthusiastic bunch, but we weren’t the only early birds. While I was composing my next shot, a Navajo man appeared out of the dunes and brush, offered a pleasant “good morning,” commented on the jackrabbits he’d seen, and then vanished back into the landscape.

Later in the day we met Suzie Yazzie, a 90-something-year-old talented weaver who speaks no English. She sat for us like a seasoned model, removing her sunglasses so they wouldn’t clash with her traditional clothing and squash-blossom necklace. Suzie’s daughter Effie became our next model, treating us to a rare sight in this modern age — a sheep drive. On horseback and wearing traditional dress, Effie drove the sheep with the help of one dog. Kicking up sand, they trotted over the dunes, keeping the flock in line and creating for us a memorable experience and fantastic photo opportunities.

Our second day at Monument Valley started, once again, before sunrise. A crescent moon sitting low in the sky led us to the Mittens, where a pool of water offered promising reflection shots. Peter reminded us to focus on the reflection and use a small aperture so everything would be sharp.

At Pancake Rocks in Mystery Valley, Peter gave his attention to workshop partici-
pant Mike Berthiaume, the retired owner of a sheet-metal business. Mike liked to rush his photos. Peter’s mission was to get Mike to slow down. According to Karen McCaustlan, a microbiologist on the trip, this was “torture” for Mike. He endured it well, though, and eventually received a respite when our time in Monument Valley ran out. Back at the lodge, our bus driver was waiting to take us to Canyon de Chelly National Monument, a network of canyons in the northeastern section of Arizona.

We began our next day’s expedition relatively late — at 9 a.m. No light in the canyon meant no pictures and no need to get up early.

Karsten, our young Navajo driver, met us at Thunderbird Lodge with our transportation — an open-air, six-wheel-drive former military vehicle built during the Korean War and later converted to propane. It could go most anywhere over the rough terrain, the gears bumping and grinding when shifted into low. Peter nicknamed the truck “Good Boy” because every time it stopped when it was supposed to, Karsten said, “Good boy.”

As we started into Canyon de Chelly, shallow muddy water flowed past yellow-leafed cottonwoods, tamarisk and fruit-laden Russian olive trees. I wondered where the road was. Without hesitation, Karsten and Good Boy hauled us through the wash, spraying water outward like a theme-park ride.

The adventure continued during a stop at Newspaper Rock, where many pictographs drew us to the shaded cliff wall. While we calmly turned prehistoric art into digital art, a chestnut-colored horse raced out of the cottonwoods bucking and kicking, veering away and coming back. Maybe he was showing off, or maybe he didn’t like us inside his corral. His performance ended as suddenly as it had begun when he disappeared into the trees.

We gave him back his territory and entered Canyon del Muerto (“canyon of the dead”) while warming ourselves with the provided blankets. The brisk temperature never phased workshop participant John Rinehart, our optimistic optometrist, who didn’t pack any long pants. “My legs never get cold,” he claimed.

Like the Anasazi before them, Navajo families live in the canyons during the spring, summer and fall, raising sheep, growing corn and tending peach, apricot and apple trees. They also sell jewelry, small weavings and painted rocks to the tourists. Two boys peddling their rock art at White House Ruin told me they often stay in the canyon with their grandmother, hiking the 1.25-mile uphill trail to catch the school bus in the morning.

Our trek through the canyon network went as far as Mummy Cave Ruin. Two bodies mummified by the arid climate were found in the ruin during an 1882 Smithsonian Institution survey. Peering up at the ancient tower house, I tried to imagine the people who had lived in this lofty village. A moment later, a raven’s caw echoed eerily against the canyon walls. My arms prickled with goose bumps.

That evening, our group members dared to share their work onscreen during a photo critique at Thunderbird Lodge. Peter’s comments were gently instructive. “You could crop out some of that sky,” he said more than once.

The trip’s final day took us to Hubbell Trading Post, a national historic site in Ganado, opened in 1878 and still operating. We found lots to photograph at Hubbell — colorful woven rugs stacked in one room, jewelry in another, a barn stuffed with hay bales, rusted farming equipment and skeletons of old wagons garnishing the yard.

Although we were on a photographic adventure, we packed our cameras away for the next stop. Democratically decided by a count of raised hands, we opted to visit the Hopi Indian Reservation, where photography isn’t allowed.

We marveled at the three villages spread over the top of First Mesa, high above the desert floor. Our tour of Walpi, a tiny pueblo-style village inhabited since the late 1600s, included sampling and purchasing blue cornmeal piki bread inside a Hopi home.

As our trip ended in Phoenix, the adventure began to seem like a dream. I could hardly believe I’d walked in the steps of John Ford and John Wayne, and the Navajo, Anasazi and Hopi people.

I’d gone to Arizona to see and photograph the West as I knew it from Holly-wood’s Westerns, but I came away with so much more. And I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

Ann Collins is the San Diego-based author of Protecting Jennie, a historical romance novel set in Williams. She also contributes stories and photographs to the San Francisco Examiner and MotorHome magazine.