Bryce Canyon, Utah: What would a Street Photographer Do Around Rocks?

On a recent trip to Utah, decided to re-visit Bryce Canyon.  Thirty years have passed since my only encounter with these magnificent natural amphitheaters that extent more than 20 miles within the Bryce Canyon National Park. Actually the “canyon” is not a true canyon but a natural and vast depression formed when a headward erosion excavated rust-color pinnacles called hoodoos giving the area multiple amphitheater-like shapes. This region of Utah was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s, and the canyon named after Ebenezer Bryce. Today it is part of a National Park covering about 56 thousand square miles.

The canyon is spectacular and my vintage photographic equipment could not even attempt to capture the vastness of the area. There are many aerial pictures of the canyon on the Internet and worth seeing. But, as my 1970s Nikon Nikkor 105mm manual lens was anxious to get some action, I did click a few times. Here is a B&W capture of a minuscule segment of an amphitheater, taken from the rim of the canyon, when the sun hit the tops of the hoodoos.

Yet, as a street photographer, I was not interested in taking pictures of rocks, no matter how grandiose and awe-inspiring they were. Instead I was hoping to find a moment where people and rocks may, together, tell a story. After a long hike into the bottom of the canyon, all I saw were people, speaking the various languages of our planet, clicking incessantly on their digital cameras as they walked around.  I have rarely encountered a time when so many people were so non-peculiar in their behavior… It seemed like they all had a digital camera stuck to their faces and clicking so feverishly as if the rocks were about to move or leave the National park!

… But I always stay alert for when someone would give me a second or two to tell my story. And that happened unexpectedly, as always. I heard someone running behind me and in Mandarin Chinese (I recognized a few words) expressing aloud her awe of the setting.

As she ran passed me, I realized that she was holding her smartphone and describing what she was seeing. Clearly she was videotaping and commenting for a documentary she would share with friends after her trip. And to make the moment more “authentic”, she was wearing a cowgirl hat and attire…

Then, at the narrow passage between two hoodoos, she decided to take selfies. That was my story – a Chinese woman, wearing cowgirl attire, taking selfies in Bryce Canyon. The light was soft, so I opened the lens to 2.8 and set the speed to 1/30 second. 

I assume this was a “western” posture of sorts. Maybe from “Saturday Night Fever” or the mechanical bull ride from “An Officer and a Gentleman”.  Somehow her posture harmonized with the curvature of the rocks and the narrow passage, especially given the tonal range of B&W film.

But the real moment came when she lay down on the rock and took a selfie.  This time my full open lens gave the softness I was hoping for to blend human and Cenozoic-age rock curves seamlessly.

… So, I may have been the only one in the thousands of people at Bryce Canyon that day who did not take pictures of the rocks. Instead, I was happy to have found that Chinese cowgirl who took selfies with rocks….

October 12, 2015

©Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015