During three annual visits to southern Utah, Stephen S. Ashley photographed the natural features that caught his eye—the arches and buttresses in Arches National Park, the cliffs and canyons in Canyonlands National Park and Capitol Reef National Park, and across the region the Colorado River and its canyon and the constantly changing weather. This book contains 30 photographs that he took on his visits to the Colorado Plateau.

This book was created to accompany a portfolio containing these 30 images. The images are not organized chronologically or geographically but rather appear in this book in the order in which they appear in the portfolio, grouped in a way that makes sense thematically.

In these pages Ashley shares the experience of taking these photographs and provides a brief account of the making of each of these photographs, including descriptions of the techniques used to take and process them.