CraigBILL

Monument Valley is officially a large area that encompasses much of the area surrounding Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, a Navajo Nation equivalent to a national park.

This sprawling expanse that the Navajo call “Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii” (meaning valley of the rocks), is a region of the Colorado Plateau that features large clusters of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 feet above the valley floor. It is located on the northern border of Arizona near the Four Corners area.

I was hoping for some atmospheric activity by the time the sun started rising. I was very happy to see the blazing breaking sun playing moment by moment with the fast shifting clouds above. Juggling graduated filters, lenses, and starburst filters, I was able to get an array of different images. In “Starfire”, I used a starburst filter exactly at the moment of sunrise to split the sun’s light into artistic rays. Meanwhile, the clouds above glowed and basked in the new radiant morning light. This panoramic grand vista photograph of that Monument Valley morning is one that was fun to capture and I will remember it always.