WITH MY CAMERA ON LAKE POWELL

EDITOR’S NOTE: On September 13, 1963 — 50 years ago this month — the final bucket of concrete was poured on Glen Canyon Dam. It was the last major milestone in a construction project that ultimately created Lake Powell. The following January, we dedicated an entire issue to the lake, which we anointed “America’s Newest Playground.” The opus-length cover story was written by Joyce Rockwood Muench and illustrated by her husband, Josef, who was one of our primary photographers back then. In addition to the cover story, the issue featured an essay by Mr. Muench about the 22 days he spent shooting the lake in the summer of 1963. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Lake Powell, and to add some photography history to our annual “Photo Issue,” we’ve excerpted his essay here. It’s a beautifully written piece that’s accompanied by a handful of the hundreds of images Mr. Muench made on and around the great lake.
 

THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S DREAM is of finding a place that gives him a new angle on a fresh subject, with special lighting effects, big views interspersed with challenging details, so many and varied that he can go right on shooting and shooting until all his film is used up.

There are, of course, many wonderful spots to take pictures. I have been traveling in the United States and abroad for years and can name many of them with remembered delight for the opportunities they offer. Venice, to mention one, is a special field. Gracefully shaped gondolas with poised gondoliers to set the tone, reflections of ornate old houses, the arched spans of endless bridges, impressive churches and campaniles make it most memorable. I could say the same of Paris, Rome, London. It is always challenging to hunt out the individual qualities that can make a single picture put you there at a glance because it catches the personality of the place. The better known a city or location, the easier it becomes to do this, at the price, however, of repeating the same best angle that has necessarily been used time and again. A view may have the most pleasing of light, the best exposure and color rendition, yet fail to be impressive if the subject matter is too familiar. “Old stuff,” people say, and pass on to some other, even inferior picture that has a fresh angle and so is stimulating to the imagination. I believe you could stand on your head in New York City and still come up with a shot someone else had thought of before.

Mist or rain, sunset and sunrise, all the “gimmicks” of weather help out, but in the most famous cities the world over, the cameraman, amateur or professional, has usually to work hard for anything really new. Out in the countryside the seasons have a built-in variety, but there, too, eventually, the camera reaches the end of changes to be rung. Mountains, whether the sharp-pointed ones in the European Alps with tiny villages hanging on steep slopes, green valleys tucked among snowfields are perennial favorites as are our own Sierra or Rocky Ranges. I never tire of photographing them. For some years now I have believed I would never run out of subjects in the desert, particularly in the Southwest and most specifically in the red-rock country. I have, however, taken enough shots so that not every view that pleases the eye is different enough to warrant adding it to my files. There comes a time when anyone working with a camera must be selective.
 

Last spring something new happened in the red-rock country. Not a new volcano spewing and spouting for a few hours or days but something as earth shaking. When the gates closed behind Glen Canyon Dam and water began to go places it had never been before, a quite literally new world was opened. Artificial lakes have been formed before and in beautiful country, but never anything like this. Nor will it happen again anywhere in quite the same way. I don’t like to make comparisons between places anymore than between the admirable qualities of my friends. There is, however, this in thinking of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River versus Lake Powell in Glen Canyon: in terms of pictures. At the Grand Canyon the timing must be right as to time of day and weather conditions, if the picture is worth looking at. Glen Canyon is so varied that any time of day offers something to occupy the busy lens.

Visitors will soon recognize this when they see the terrain. I thought I knew the area well after making trips up and down river through Glen Canyon before the lake was born, several times each year for some eighteen years. Now water has run back up into side canyons, places I could never go before. Some are very narrow and winding. They twist and turn so that steep walls or rolling slickrock are seen in many directions at the turn of every bend. In the same view a succession of varied lighting can be included for one shot. The camera may be almost lost in a shadowy tunnel while reflected light glows and glimmers a few feet away and in the background, a farther cliff may catch the full sun.

The light meter jumps as though it were playing hopscotch and the photographer had better be sharp making the required compromises. The extremes of light and dark must be balanced to get details in the dark shadows and yet not wash out the brilliant portions of the picture. Working entirely in shadowy or softly lighted spots the amount of exposure indicated by the meter seems surprising while in big views, flooded not just by water but by the sun’s rays, the reading may seem absurdly low. Each stretch of cliff face or the walls lining the narrow canals up through the canyons seems to offer something new. Textures are as different, one from another, as bolts of material stacked on the shelves of a yardage-goods store. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that designers were flocking to the area for new ideas. Stripes in graduated tones of brown, gray, black, white, as well as red, blue, purple are the result of weathering water “painting.” Vivid greens are provided by vegetation where ferns, columbine, monkey flowers, moss, or lichen have found moisture seeping through cracks and coming to the surface. Ephemeral waterfalls, an experience in themselves when caught right after a sudden, enchantingly brief rain, leave patterns of both color and form.
 

Ages ago these walls were lifting into place and were cut by streams that left fantastic moulding and pockets. Now they catch the light and present opportunities for closeups or add accent to views of a boat leaving its tumbling white wake in the water between the high cliffs. There are immense amphitheatres, overhangs where the pattern is a moving one, caused as sun hits the water and bounces up in checkers of flickering light. A passing boat may rearrange the design like a fishnet swaying in the wind. Looking skyward the same spot may have a lovely arch to frame a stalwart butte beyond, all touched off with a lush green trim of redbud, oak, willow on the shore. Keen or rounded edges of rock walls offer more endless mutations, these of architectural patterns. The scale of the region is, always remember, immense. Boats look tiny when one is more than a few feet away and the “cathedrals,” complete with rounded domes or lifting in “steeples,” are comparably larger than any man has ever been able to construct.

In addition to the changes that shifts of camera position bring are the hourly ones caused by the varied angle of the sun in its path across the sky. Marooned at one place for a day, you might still succeed in getting a whole collection of different pictures. Very early in the morning and again as night falls, the water smoothes to a mirror finish. Now every visible feature at the edge has doubled and even without the flush of colored sky thrown on the water, there are pictures to take of reflections, intimate ones or of walls hundreds of feet high. When a really colorful sunset develops, a foreground of colored water, middleground of massive rock buttes turned to black silhouettes give the three-dimensional feel that produced grand pictures under clouds alive with color.

Not every picture of Lake Powell need show water. In almost every canyon, above the waterline where you can get out and take shank’s mare to find other subjects, there are angles. We found little waterfalls and bubbling streams, dry beds where the rocks had been tumbled into intriguing groups. In spring, flowers find enough soil and moisture to add a different touch. Yuccas, Indian paintbrush, prickly pear cactus were not rare and always seemed well placed.
 

On the other hand, the camera might concentrate entirely on the water itself because it changes color depending on the walls overhanging it or the amount of light provided by the sky in open views. There are touches of bronzy-gold, green, milky-white to gray, black, dark or light blue, and combinations of them all among the shifts I noticed and tried to capture in color.

To this background of form and tone that the framework or skeleton of the country offers, all the human interest action of the water playground calls out to be shot as record of a pleasant vacation or exploration of a brand new area. Boating, fishing, water-skiing seem more exciting than ever because of the dramatic stage-set in which they are to be captured. Camping activities, moody night shots around a campfire as well as trail hiking with people seen at the numerous arches and bridges make a field day for any camera.

As if all this were not enough to have made my first photographic trip on Lake Powell the most exciting camera experience of a lifetime, the weather was made for pictures. Clear and dry, with a maximum of sunlight, the Southwest’s special brand is the final seal on the area’s natural photogenic excellence. So it has everything: endless variations on the theme of red rock that photographs so well, wonderful accessibility on channels of negotiable water, closeup details that challenge and invite, and the requisite light to display them, make Lake Powell not just the nation’s most spectacular water playground but photographer’s paradise as well.