SIR DAVID

David MUENCH bends over to touch a small, white flower growing among the grasses and clover of a fallow field near his New Mexico home. A wisp of white hair falls across his sun-weathered face.

"This is a perennial morning-glory," he says. "A lot of people call it a weed, but I love the things."

As he says this, Muench's cornflower-blue eyes light up to reveal the nature boy he remains at heart, the boy whose mother was a botanist and whose father was a landscaper, the boy who grew into a photographer who sees beauty in the smallest things.

Arizona Highways published Muench's work for the first time in the mid-1950s, when he was still a teenager. Sixty years later, he's still contributing

above Flagstaff, and they agreed. [Arizona Snowbowl] didn't get any snow until the very last month of the season, and then they had 8 feet. So I got lucky and went out there and made the cover.

Both Marc and Zandria worked for Muench Photography, the business David created in the 1970s, contributing images and servicing clients. An assignment from a calendar publisher led Zandria to develop her own specialty: photographing dogs and cats. Like his father, Marc focuses on landscapes. But while David's images feature unpeopled wilderness, Marc's typically dramatize adventure sports.

Marc eventually took over the business and digitized the collection, a process that took 10 years. He also launched Muench Workshops. In a bit of a reversal, he now hires his dad to teach.

When he's out with us on a group, whether I'm there or not, he's probably the first one off the bus and the last one back on it," Marc says. "He just keeps going and doesn't stop. He absolutely loves it. He still has his vision. He still has his lust for the landscape. That's something that hasn't diminished."

Marc also printed the 200 images David selected to be archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

It took him a long time to get to those images," Marc recalls. "It took him a couple of years. And even today, he'll come up with a different collection. He just has so many places he's been, and has a personal relationship with, that it's difficult for him to leave some out, I think.

Meanwhile, Zandria is in the process of digitizing David's personal collection for www.davidmuenchphotography.com.

After 50 years, I'm still handling his 4x5 transparencies," she says. "I've gone out and done my own thing, but I've always come back to these pictures. I'm kind of devoting my life to them."

Now 79, MUENCH lives with his wife, writer Ruth Rudner, in Corrales, New Mexico. They share a Santa Fe-style home surrounded by flower gardens that erupt in spring with hollyhocks, irises and lavender, as well as flowering apple and red-bud trees. They also maintain a home near Bozeman, Montana, adjacent to their own little wilderness preserve.

We're taking care of 75 acres that are protected in perpetuity so they will not be developed," Muench says. "We have a stream, South Willow Creek. The two Willow Creeks make up the main one that goes into the Jefferson River. I'm enthralled by that because of the Lewis and Clark connection."

Montana's Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks monitors the land and restored the stream to its natural state a couple of years ago. It was for a mill, prior, and just ran straight," Muench says. "Now the stream twists and winds nicely. We're preserving it; that's protecting it. So we're doing a little part."

Professionally, Muench hasn't slowed down much. In recent years, he moved from 4x5 and 35 mm formats to digital photography.

Mainly for the spontaneity of it," Muench says, "to catch the spontaneous in things. And it's working. I get moments that are here now and gone in a few minutes. And that is so special. I'd like to see what I can do with digital seeing, because it's a new layer. It challenges me to push the way I've seen even further."

And while his work has taken Muench all over the world, he has never stopped visiting the Arizona places he loves, such as the Chiricahua Mountains, the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley. Even the Kofas, there, with the palms," he says. "Fascinating place. Love going there. It's almost like returning home. I'd like to return to Escudilla Mountain. There are some mysteries there I'm a little puzzled about. There are different things [and] places I want to return to, especially because I haven't been there for a little while and I always look at places with a fresh eye."

In May, Muench published his 60th book, Monument Valley: Navajo Nation Natural Wonder. Arizona Highways published three of Muench's book-length collections of Arizona images: Eternal Desert, David Muench's Arizona and Vast & Intimate.

There's such power in the landscape in Arizona," Muench says. "And Arizona Highways has held on for a long time. It's an honor to have some of my best work in the magazine, especially on subjects that haven't been done that much, and that's why I come back to the magazine. I want it to hold up through time." АН To learn more about David Muench, visit www.davidmuenchphotography.com.