With My Camera on Lake Powell

NAVAJO TRIBAL PARK PLANS ON LAKE POWELL

The sprawling, irregular shape of Lake Powell which began in March of 1963 to finger back into canyons and flood widespread basins in Northern Arizona and Southeastern Utah is now appearing on maps designed for tourists. They will notice that the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area does not include the south shore of the lake in its jogged outline. This is on the Navajo Indian Reservation and the Tribe has retained its lands above the elevation of 3,720 feet. Visitors will find, as soon as they can be made available, facilities and conveniences comparable to those which the National Park Service offers around the rest of the lake perimeter, a total of some 1800 miles.

About twenty-three percent of the entire impoundment is thus under jurisdiction of the Navajo Tribal Council. A survey is almost complete on the three million acres which were withdrawn to create the Powell Lake Tribal Park and Recreation Area. Its development will be part of the Navajo Tribal Park System under a commission headed by Sam Day III. The overall plan calls for a marina, campgrounds, and whatever other facilities can be adapted to the very irregular terrain. Actual work should be in progress sometime during 1964. The Indians will construct the facilities and provide man-power for the operation and patrolling of the area.

The first development will probably be in the Antelope Creek area east of the town of Page. The Padre Point and Rainbow Bridge area and Oak Island are also under consideration. A new highway from Navajo Route #1 (Arizona 64, "The Navajo Trail") is planned to run northwest from near Shonto, and while not in the park itself, will become an important access route. Old trails and some existing unimproved roads which four-wheel drive vehicles and Indian pickups have used for some time will have a share in opening a section of the Reservation once considered about the most remote. It holds surprises in scenery and here and there, most interesting prehistoric ruins.

The Navajo Tribal Council has been acquiring experience and know-how on setting up parks and campgrounds and oper ating them, all of which will serve them well in making the most of the lake's potential. At Monument Valley they built the first of their parks and the very fine Visitor Center there at a strategic point, both for accessibility and view, is a popular stopover in cross-country travel. The Indians have a natural feel for the use of stone and fortunately can find ample amounts on their lands. The campground near the center, designed by Mr. Day, gives each unit privacy and a free sweep of a desertscape which has few peers. We can expect similar set-ups along the lake.

In the addition to the convenience offered to the million expected visitors who will use the big new water playground, the Navajo park will add one more interesting facet to the area. Vacationers, especially those from far corners of the nation, are going to enjoy being greeted as guests by Indian Park Rangers on their own grounds. Well-trained and smartly uniformed, they hint at the profound changes which are occurring throughout the Reservation. Friends of the Navajos will hear with pleasure that the Council is progressing with plans which will give yet another opportunity of displaying their special gifts, their natural friendliness and charm.

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 which 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 which 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 sharppointed 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 redrock country. I have, however, taken enough shots so that not every view which 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 redrock 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 ofThe Lake Powell photo coverage in this issue was taken by Photographer Josef Muench last summer, after the waters of the lake began to form behind Glen Can-yon Dam.

NOTES FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS

The color photographs were taken with a 4x5 Linhof camera in which Ektachrome was exposed. Aperture opening, speed and lens varied practically with each photograph depending upon light conditions.

The photographer spent twenty-two days on the lake and explored many of the fascinating tributary canyons opening into Glen Canyon.

Lake Powell, when full, will extend 186 miles up the Colorado River and 71 miles up the San Juan. The lake will have a capacity of 28,040,000 acre feet of water and a surface area of 162,700 acres. Normal reservoir elevation will be 3,700 feet.

MY CAMERA ON LAKE POWELL by Josef Muench

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 the 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 the 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 and 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 pat-terns 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 for frame to 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 which 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 pic-tures. Very early in the morning and again as night falls, the water smoothes to a mirror finish. Now every visible feature at the edge of doubled and even without the flush of colored sky thrown on the water, there are pictures to take of reflections, intimate ones or of wall hundreds of feet high. When a really colorful sunset develops, a foreground of colored water, middle-ground of massive rock buttes turned to black silhouettes give the three-dimensional feel which 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 which the framework or skeleton of the country offers, all the human interest action of the water playground call 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 dra-matic stage-set in which they are to be captured. Camping activi-ties, 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 photo-graphic 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 redrock which photographs so well, wonderful accessibility on channels of negotiable water, closeup details which challenge and invite, and the requisite light to display them, make Lake Powell not just the nation's most spectacular water playground but photog-rapher's paradise as well.

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