My wife and I started off the new year doing what we love most – hiking in new locations. For this trip, we headed to Holbrook, AZ, to check out the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park. Rain was in the forecast, but we managed to stay dry and went for a longer hike in the northern part of the park on our first day, followed by visits to the petrified forest areas in the southern part of the park before heading home on our second day.
This image is from the Crystal Forest, which has some of the most remarkable collections of petrified logs that have turned into crystals over the past millennia. At first thought, crystallized wood doesn’t sound that interesting, but I ended up being completely fascinated. This is probably because the photography conditions were excellent.
The strewn-about logs with the Painted Desert as a background, combined with the low winter sun and remnants of rain clouds, created otherworldly scenes bathed in dynamic light. I found it to be an environment perfect for a medium telephoto lens to achieve some depth compression, bringing all the elements together and giving a true sense of the place.
