Behind The shot With Rakesh Subramanian

One photographer. One image. The story behind the shot.

Arizona was a solo trip, and I gave it everything I had.

The centerpiece was an overnight Milky Way workshop at White Pockets, two participants, one guide, and a long drive into the Vermillion Cliffs on dirt roads until civilization was well behind us. White Pockets is unlike anything I'd seen before. The landscape doesn't look sculpted so much as imagined.

The Milky Way never showed. August in Northern Arizona, we drove all the way out there into a completely clouded over sky. Over dinner that night, quietly conceding to the weather, the other photographer mentioned Mountain Sheep Canyon. Quieter than Antelope, he said. Worth an early morning.

I had one morning left before driving back to Phoenix. I booked the first tour.

It was drizzling when we arrived. Maybe that's why I was the only guest.

My guide and I walked in as the light, what little there was of it, began finding the walls. The Z7 was with me, though standing there I wasn't sure any focal length could hold what those walls were doing. The sandstone doesn't perform for you. It just exists, in that particular silence that comes with an empty canyon on a wet morning.

I'm glad the sky was cloudy both nights. I wouldn't have ended up there otherwise.

You can follow Rakesh’s work on his website www.pixpectivefotography.com