Guy Tal | Photographer, Author

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Cottonwood tree still bare after the winter’s slumber, among desert shrubs.

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Ash tree straddling large boulders in a canyon, in autumn foliage.

Joshua tree yucca growing among a thick field of desert trumpet buckwheat plants. These plants have been thriving in areas formerly occupied by other native plants due to climate change.

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Native American rock art is often cryptic, open to interpretation, its meaning long lost and perhaps not even comprehensible to modern humans.

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Petroglyph, likely depicting a bear or mountain lion, on a flat, level slab of rock.

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Petroglyph depicting (perhaps) a person holding (perhaps) a spear.

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Small cottonwood tree showing the last of its autumn foliage in the last light of the day.

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Small aspen tree in autumn foliage absorbing the last ray of light before sunset.

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Willow branch catching the last light of the day.

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Travertine ridges on the slopes of a warm spring.

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Cottonwood leaf slowly sinking into wet clay mud.

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Concretions and patterns in travertine.

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Aspen and maple trees in autumn color.

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Cottonwoods, birches, and ponderosa pines in autumn color, in a hidden canyon.

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Dormant cottonwood trees in winter, still holding onto some of their autumn foliage.

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The sandy footprints of a wild bobcat on a frozen, icy winter pond.

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Ice patterns reflecting red lights in a desert canyon

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The shape of these ice patterns made me think of the edge of a black hole.

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A beam of light pierces through a deep canyon to light up a narrow bench.

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A bend in a desert river lit momentarily as a storm moves in.

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Last light of the day crazes the slope of a desert hill.

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"Love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust."

—Rainer Maria Rilke

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Cottonwood and tamarisk trees by a desert creek showing off the last of their autumn foliage before winter.

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A dense thicket of young cottonwood trees growing among willows in the floodplain of a desert river. Having shed their leaves for winter, they await spring.

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Desert canyon corridor.

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Pagoda buckwheat plant on the rim of a desert hill.

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Errant shaft of light illuminating a surreal landscape of desert hills.

This was once a place where one could spend days in quiet solitude, watching the light. Now it has become a busy photo checklist destination.

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Vastness! and Age! and Memories of Eld!

Silence! and Desolation! and dim Night!

I feel ye now - I feel ye in your strength.

—Edgar Allan Poe

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Mountain creek flowing among a ponderosa pine forest. Oaks and currant bushes in autumn color.

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Raindrops hitting the surface of an alpine lake reflecting aspen trees in autumn color.

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Aspen leaves floating over the rippled reflections of reeds in an alpine lake.

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Dormant young cottonwood trees, rabbitbrush, and tamarisk shoots against a bare hillside.

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Young cottonwood and willow trees beginning to change color in early spring, before their first leaves sprout.

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A row of wild rose bushes in front of dormant aspen trees .

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Last light on the steep upper slopes of a desert canyon.

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Distant rock forms, sacred to the Navajo people, loom above a desert canyon. “Yá'át'ééh” is a Navajo greeting meaning (roughly) “it is good.”

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The funneling opposite slopes of a desert canyon glowing in the last light of the day.

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Desert plants in prolific bloom at the feet of an arid mountain range.

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Desert flowers in prolific bloom, protected by abundant cholla cactus.

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“Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.” —Walt Whitman

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Storm cloud and virga (rain that evaporates before reaching the ground) above a desert landscape.

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Moon surrounded by colorful aura (“moonbow”) and streaming clouds.

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Sunlight piercing through thick storm clouds illuminating desert buttes.

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Sandstone pattern.

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Colorful mineral deposits in sandstone.

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Mineral deposits in sandstone in the shape of a dog’s head.

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The slopes of a desert mountain glowing in late winter light.

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Colorful mineral deposits flowing through sandstone (a geologic phenomenon known as Liesegang banding).

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Eroded sandstone making its way down a slope of colorful clay. Although we think that the landscape is solid and unchanging, this is only because we are short-lived beings. The earth is constantly eroding and changing.

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Winter snow covering hills that were formerly deposits at the bottom of an ancient seas. The world is constantly changing.

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Juniper tree surrounded by a snow-covered desert landscape as light pierces through the clouds during a winter storm.

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Low clouds fill a valley between an aspen grove and distant mountains.

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Pooled water and rippled mud remain in a shaded corner of a canyon after a flood.

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Desert creek vanishes into a cavernous grotto.

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Desert creek carves its way through arid lands.

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A dead ponderosa pine sapling glows in a ray of winter sunlight. These trees, known to live for hundreds of years, are now declining in the American West and may be gone entirely from this region before the end of the century.

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A rock profile and the tip of a cottonwood tree share a narrow beam of sunlight for a few moments each winter morning.

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A dark forest of charred, dead ponderosa pines remain standing after a wildfire. These skeleton forests are becoming more common in the American West as the changing climate ravages forest lands.

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Hazy sunlight reflecting among foam patterns below a small desert waterfall.

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A rare flow of water coming down a normally dry channel during a summer monsoon flash flood.

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Hazy sunlight reflecting in shallow water flowing over a travertine formation.

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Snags of dead firs and ponderosa pines against a backdrop of young aspens in autumn color.

This image was made about a decade after a fire burned this formerly forested mountain side.

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Snag of a dead ponderosa pine lying among sagebrush and scrub oak in autumn color.

This image was made about a decade after a major fire devastated this forested mountainside.

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Lone pinyon pine, bent and twisted, holds on to its perch on the rim of a deep canyon.

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I made this image (on 4x5 film) in the late 1990s. I found this place at the end of a long day’s drive, looking for a place to camp. At the time I didn't think much about sharing the beauty of such places with photographer friends. There were not many of us working in these places. It just so happened that the information got shared and re-shared until it ended up in a photo guidebook, and the place soon became reduced to yet another “photo hotspot” for traveling photographers to check off a list. It is unlikely anyone will ever again experience the thrill of discovering it anew, let alone be able to spend a few days there in solitude.

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In picking images for this round of updates, I sought nostalgic memories of places I discovered and spent solitary days in, steeped in beauty and silence, but where such experiences are no longer possible. Some of these places have become photographic hotspots. The experience of visiting them will never again be as I have known it. It saddens me to now that landscape photography, which to me has always ensued from love of wild places, has now become a destructive force for these places and the experiences they once harbored.

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Summing up the theme of images made in places that used to be anonymous and peaceful but no longer are, I now seek images such as this one: images that do not betray their location, composed such that they don’t become popular attractions and a risk to the welfare of the few places remaining where one may still find peace.

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An enormous polished rock perched above a desert canyon.

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Deposited by floods, there’s no telling how long the remains of this old juniper trees had been there, on the rim of a deep desert canyon. Perhaps years, perhaps decades or even centuries.

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Basalt slot canyon covered in colorful moss and lichen.

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Soft veils of rain drifting over the landscape as a monsoon storm moves in.

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Deer grazing on new spring grasses on mountain slope.

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Deer hoof prints in a shallow layer of dry blue clay deposited by a canyon flood.

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Cracked layer of light-colored mud deposited by a flood over an area of red sand, dotted with raindrop “craters.”

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Desiccating shrub and moqui marbles temporarily holding onto a barren sheet of iron-rich sandstone.