Into the great wide open

Whenever I have the opportunity to travel somewhere, I go. It's been a policy of mine since college. No vacation time? No plan? You just make it work. So when Tiff asked me to go to Arizona with her I jumped at the offer despite knowing nothing about the area we were headed to. I had been to Phoenix before, to see about a girl and a photo workshop. The girl lead to heartbreak, but the workshop ended up scoring me a newspaper job for a couple years. Phoenix seemed like the pit of hell back then. Decrepit mattresses littered the side of the highway the whole way to Tucson. It seemed like a place no one cared about.

I didn't know what to expect out of this trip. Will AZ still seem depressing and empty to me? Or will I find a quiet place to shoot my little heart out? It turned out to be the best place to shoot, whether it was out of a bug encrusted windshield or while skirting the edge of some scary-ass cliff in the Grand Canyon. This trip did not disappoint. I joked with Tiff "yeah, yeah here are some more f*cking rocks," but in reality it was some of the most beautiful scenery I'd ever taken in.

We heard from our B&B owner at The Inn at 410 that if we went to the Grand Canyon we shouldn't miss Shoshone Point. It had no sign. He told us the mile markers to search between, told us to find a plain dirt parking lot without mention of anything. It sounded a little suspicious to my New England mentality, but what the hell? Tiff and I always find great adventures. They practically fall into our lap when we are together. After a mile of walking on a nondescript dirt path through the woods, we came upon this:

There were only two other people when we got there. A woman was sitting cross legged staring out to the canyon as her counterpart scaled a rock that jutted out into the abyss.

Tiff and I were like little school girls running off in different directions to get the best photos. Sometimes coming together for silly self timer shots.

The rain came and went, but left behind some pretty cool drops.

We continued on to some more touristy spots in the canyon and found this:

I wonder what percentage of frat boys fall to their deaths while posing on a cliff's edge?

My boots at the end of the Earth...

As a photographer, I constantly worry about light. Will we arrive at noontime when the light is at its suckiest? Will we have enough time to see sunset? The lighting was tricky, overcast in some areas, overly bright in other spots. We did arrive around noon, but we were there long enough to find this spot of light peeping through the clouds.

Moments like that come and go and hopefully I'm mindful enough to see them when they're thrown in front of me.