Arches National Park, USA

ARCHES NATIONAL PARK, USA | "The Red Rock Desert of the Colorado Plateau"

Arches National Park contains the highest density of natural stone arches on earth — over 2,000 documented spans within 310 square kilometers of high desert in southeastern Utah, where the specific combination of salt bed geology, water erosion, and freeze-thaw weathering over 300 million years has produced a landscape of fins, balanced rocks, towers, and arches in the deep red Entrada Sandstone that changes color completely across the course of a single day. The park sits at 1,200 to 1,700 meters elevation on the Colorado Plateau, where the aridity of the Great Basin meets the canyon country of the Colorado River drainage, and the quality of the light at sunrise and sunset — when the low angle catches the iron oxide in the sandstone and the shadows define the geometry of the fins and spires — is among the most specific and unrepeatable light events in North American landscape photography.

The colors shift through the day from the pale salmon of the sandstone in the flat midday light to the deep terracotta and burnt sienna of the formations at golden hour, with the turquoise of the cloudless Utah sky as the constant counterpoint above the red rock. Delicate Arch at sunset, the Windows Section in the early morning, and the Fiery Furnace at midday are each a different painting made from the same materials.