IN PURSUIT OF THE SUN.

The scene was a serene, pastoral landscape; a brush-choked gully zigzagging through the dappled shadows of overhanging oaks and the stiffly rising, stony hillside that hemmed the edge of a small valley. Everything whispered of tranquility, everything but the anvil-sized stone that arched up from the trembling underbrush to tumble heavily through the air and fall with an echoing thump in the gully bottom. A second, a third and a fourth rock followed the same trajectory up from the rustling bushes until the fifth shattered an outstretched limb of dry, dead oak into chips. Then other stones thudded and cracked into one another, twigs clattered and rattled excitedly, and dirt and pebbles cascaded busily into the wash.

A forest animal in a trap? No. A few moments later a big blond head thrust up above the tops of the bushes and called eagerly to me: "Come over and have a look at this!" As a diaphanous pall of dust settled to the ground, David Muench was about to take a photograph.

His camera, atop a precariously balanced tripod, was aimed through the window he had whittled through to the landscape. It was a fine picture: a golden meadow stippled with cattle, framed by dark green oak limbs and dominated by the warm, rich light of late afternoon.

Also in that picture, almost tangibly in it, are nearly twenty-five years of study, experimentation, trial and error. David was six years old when his distinguished photographerfather, Josef Muench, gave him the camera with which he snapped his first photograph. For more than a decade afterward David accompanied his father on the field trips which resulted in many beautiful pictures in this and other magazines. Young David was constantly watching, studying and asking questions as his father worked. Not only did he receive an exceptional education in nature photography, he learned from his father an enduring love and an abiding respect for the land and for nature.

After comprehensive training at New York's Rochester Institute and at the Los Angeles Art Center, David put the urbane, imploded styles he learned at advertising and fashion photography behind him in order to specialize in western scenic landscapes. Whereupon the army drafted him and sent him to Florida as a company clerk.

Once out of service, David began testing the theories he'd digested about landscape photography and devising some of his own. "Everybody says," he told me once, "that a photograph has no memory, that it's a slice out of time, a frozen moment. But the more I work at it the more it seems to me that a good landscape includes the sense of on-moving time. Of course, to get that feeling you have to snatch at the one moment in which all the elements of form, composition, light and shadow come together to make precisely the right statement about the subject."

Beyond technical proficiency with the camera, David relies on three factors to produce his exceptional photographs. The first of these is an encyclopedic knowledge of the terrain. As we traveled Arizona I gained the distinct impression that there was no road, no track, no footpath in the state that David hadn't explored in search of a picture. "About four miles up there," he'd say as we hurtled down the highway, "there's an outcrop of white and red rock with saguaros grouped around it like gentlemen out on a stroll And his voice would trail off as he studied the morning sky. "The sun ought to be rising just where I need it on the 24th or 25th of December." On he drove, making a mental note to spend a Christmas there at the first opportunity.

Which introduces his second "good picture factor:" time. David would no sooner set out to take pictures without enough time than he'd start without enough film. "You've got to be willing to wait until everything is just right, until the light splashes with just enough warmth, from just the right direction, at just the right time of day or year. And if there's something wrong, too many clouds or too much wind, for instance, you've got to take the time to wait it out or to go on to something else and come back later."

Deciding when more time is required is a function of the third factor the mind's eye of the photographer himself. David takes every picture in his mind before he uses the camera. And then he waits to click the shutter until the landscape duplicates this mental image. Many times he has to go back and back again before the camera will capture exactly what the inner eye has seen.

David realized early that most often the difference between a memorable landscape and an unexceptional one is the quality of the light. "Light unfolds the quality of the subject and reveals its character," he says, "and much of my time in the early years was spent in learning how to recognize what is appropriate to the subject and what is not. Sometimes the sunlight is so powerful that it bounces and ricochets violently over the landscape and calls up an equally powerful reaction from the shadows, the absence of light."

As he learned to discriminate in his choice of light on the landscape, he began to photograph the light itself; the romantic moods of sunset, the sparkling promise of sunrise. "Later on, as I became more familiar with light's potent qualities, I began to see the excitement implicit in less romantic times of day blazing noons, storms, hushed mornings."

And then, inevitably, he began to consider the source of light itself as a subject. "I remember when the idea struck me, and it struck with the force of a blow. I was shooting a sunrise, waiting for the early light to descend the eastern slope of the San Francisco Peaks, tensed, looking over my shoulder at the rising sun and straight ahead at its light settling down the mountainside, when one look caught the sun just as it was poised to leap directly from a mountaintop into the sky. For the first time I became aware of the sun itself as distinct from the light it throws." David got his mountain sunrise photograph, but it was almost sheer reflex, for his mind was already occupied with the complexities of photographing the sun.

Capturing the sun's many likenesses on film is no small challenge. If there is a key to David's success in meeting this challenge, it is that he considers the sun just as he would any other object.

No single photograph can say everything there is to say about the sun, and David began by choosing those aspects of the sun which interested and excited him. There were many: the sun as serene herald of the day at dawning. The sun as implacable dictator at midday. The benign sun that nourishes all life with its light and warmth. The sun whose light competes with the shadows for the land. There is no limit to the ways we can see the sun.

But we do not see it abstracted. If its rising excites us, its relation to the horizon is important. If we thrill to the sun as life-giver, we are aware of the evidence of that gift: a field of cotton, a single desert blossom. In imagining the different faces of the sun, David selects settings appropriate to them.Not just any horizon for a sunrise, but one that under-scores the sun's buoyancy and the fragile quality of its light. And so on through every aspect of the sun. He began taking the photographs he saw with his inner eye, waiting for months, if necessary, until he was satisfied with conditions.

And then he studied the photographs he'd taken, searching his recollection to determine if they might have been improved by waiting just a moment longer or just a moment less. If his critical eye saw a better picture possible, he went back again.

The results are reproduced here. They are startling in their intensity or in the questions they pose. Is, for example, the close view of a cholla, its needles like a furry halo in the late light of afternoon, is this a photograph of a cactus or of sunlight? And if it is both what is their relationship?

David worked for a year and a half, exactingly, exhaustingly, to produce these photographs. Then he stopped. Not satisfied, exactly, but emptied of the subject.

I caught a speculative glint in his expression toward the end of this search for the sun, and I suspect that another challenge has engaged his attention now. This time I'll bet he's going to shoot the moon!

CACTUS KINGDOM

When April charms the desert ways, she leaves a path in flowers so gay and so exquisite that they jewel the Springtime hours.

But when you start to name them, all romance flies away for if you want to label them, here's what you'll have to say . . .

That one's a staghorn cholla and that's a prickly pear; this pink one's devil finger, that's hedgehog over there . . .

There's jumping cholla, beavertail, saguaro . . . barrel, too, but beauty flowers in spite of all that prickly names can do!

APRIL FOOL

April is more fool than I, Sponsoring a fickle sky That smiles one moment, scowls the next, Without excuse, without pretext.

April is the fool, not I, Thinking Winter's dogs will lie Asleep while she steals softly in, And not break forth with frightful din.

April, you're the fool, not I. Every year I wonder why You start unpacking your trousseau Before old March decides to go.

APPOINTMENT

Morn, I woke to canopies of apple blossoms and brown bees.

Noon, apples jeweled in the sun. I plucked and ate them one by one . . .

Evening came all sunset glow apple blossoms turned to snow . . .

Night, my fragrant fire will keep rendezvous with bees, and sleep . . .

FUSION

The sky drips down into the sea And no horizon marks just when The twilight ball of sun becomes A ruby-water denizen.

And who can know when stripes of sun That ribbon from the sky to ship, Float merrily upon the wind Or lie upon a high wave-tip!

Whitecaps join hands with gay white clouds To dance away an afternoon, And on a sparkling summer night, The laughing waves splash up the moon.

In the August and October, 1967, issue of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS, you write about the plaque at Rainbow Bridge by Jo Mora, honor ing the Indian guide Noshja-Begay. I have never seen a published picture of this plaque. I have also talked to many people who have been to Rainbow Bridge and never saw the plaque. I thought that it would be nice if you could print a picture in your magazine. The enclosed photo was taken on the 17th of April, 1963, when my daughter and I went down Glen Canyon from Hite to Rainbow.

CHINESE GREETINGS:

The purpose of this letter could have been accomplished with an order card from the ARIZONA HIGHWAYS calendar. However, in this case I feel a letter is more appropriate.

I am assigned as the Public Information Offi cer for the Military Assistance Advisory Group, Republic of China, stationed in Taipei, Taiwan. In this capacity I am privileged to work closely with the Chinese Air Force major general who is the Military spokesman for the Ministry of

YOURS SINCERELY

National Defense. This position is equivalent to our Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.

As it is the custom in the Orient to exchange gifts on the Lunar New Year (January 30, 1968), we of the MAAG also participate in this custom by exchanging gifts with our Chinese counterparts and associates. Rather than giving the usual locally procured gift, I feel that as an Arizonan I have a unique opportunity to present to the spokesman a gift depicting not only a part of America but also my home state. Therefore, please accept my order and check for one personalized copy of the 1967 bound volume of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS. The name to be embossed is:

PHOTOGRAPHER-WRITER:

I have just completed a thorough look at the January issue of your magazine as thor ough as one look can be and thank you for it.

I have been a subscriber to ARIZONA HIGH WAYS almost as long as you have been its editor in the early issues, only black and white photographs appeared. I vowed never to part with one issue, but after all, one's house can contain only so much! So our state hospital for those less mentally fortunate than others was on the receiving end of my necessary clearing out but I did keep a representative copy from each year. Sadly, I shall soon have to repeat the process.

However, this issue will be one of those I save! Esther Henderson has done herself proud in this one I have looked at her pictures so long that I almost think I know her personally.

OPPOSITE PAGE "THE SUN CASTS LONG AUTUMN SHADOWS IN CANYON DE CHELLY" BY DAVID MUENCH.

Scene in Canyon de Chelly is photographed from Tsegi Overlook, look ing north over steep-walled canyon along South Rim drive. Late afternoon shadows penetrate meandering canyon. Towering cliffs dwarf and magnify a delicate image of two horses moving upstream. Note present-day Navajo hogan. Here is an exciting example of man's living in balance with his environment. Linhof IV camera; Ektachrome E3; f.8 at 1/25th sec.; 15" Apo Ronar Rodenstock lens; October; cold and contrasting autumn lighting; meter reading 10.

BACK COVER "A SETTING SUN WALKS THE LONELY RAILS" BY DAVID MUENCH.

View along AT&SF R.R. line (main) just off U.S. 66 at Walapai, near Kingman, Arizona. Mountains are portion of Hualapai Range. One of my luckiest images a truly photographer's dream to have sun, in its low winter projectile, finally settle down just above symmetrical track perspective. This, with a straight track for miles. Magnetic excitement felt when sun was obscured for much of pre-sunset time. Then, after having practically given up, out from its hiding pops this creator of all! slowly to pass from view again. Exposure again reflects a brilliant image. Meter appears to go erratically berserk. Linhof IV camera; Ektachrome E3; f.25 at 1/100th sec.; 8" Zeiss Tessar lens; February; warm-brilliant-contrasting; meter reading 15+.