I’ve been a rock climber just about as long as I’ve been a photographer, and both pursuits have taken up most of my life. As a result, when I’m out on assignment for Arizona Highways and other clients, I’m always looking for places that might be good climbs. If I find one that might also make for a good climbing photo, that’s even better.
I found one such spot, the one you see in this photo, on the Mogollon Rim many years ago. The rock formation has been around forever, of course, and many people have climbed it via a relatively easy route on the west face (on the right side of this photo). To my knowledge, though, no one had found a route up the overhanging face, which was essential to the photo I envisioned.
It was 10 or 12 years before I was able to make that photo a reality. A climbing friend and I went out to Rim Country in the afternoon and set about finding a route up that overhang. While there is a drop of hundreds of feet below the overhang, this wasn’t quite as dangerous as it looks: He was roped up, and if you look closely, you can see his rope farther down.
In rock climbing, Mother Nature dictates where the handholds are, and if the route had gone to the right, the shot wouldn’t have been this dramatic. As it happened, though, there was a perfect hole on the underside of the overhang, and that’s what my friend is grabbing in this photo.
I made this shot at twilight and used an auxiliary light to illuminate the formation, which added contrast between those warm tones and the blues of the surrounding landscape. I also like the feeling of anticipation in my friend’s stance on the rock. In all, the photo worked out better than I could have imagined — and demonstrated the value of keeping an eye out for interesting subjects when you’re out shooting.