Lake Powell

Everything pale in this photograph used to be underwater. That band of bleached rock is the old shoreline, and Lake Powell has dropped far enough that you can read the drought straight off the canyon walls.
This is straight down over a side canyon on a warm afternoon, the water so deep it goes almost black against the sandstone. Two paddleboarders had the whole arm to themselves, drifting near the middle of the channel, close enough to talk. From up here they are the only thing telling you how big this canyon really is.
I flew it square to the water so the channel runs corner to corner and the rock reads as pure shape. High sun kills the shadows, and once they are gone the whole scene flattens into pattern, two colors and one line. The boards had to sit in the bend of it, not beside it.
For anyone who has spent a summer on this water, or wants a wall that behaves like an abstract painting. Printed and finished to gallery standard, made to hold deep blue against warm stone in a modern room. A piece of Lake Powell to keep, exactly as it looked the summer it was this low.