A Storm Over the Colorado River

I was driving through southern Utah when I saw this scene. I didn’t have a plan to stop or any idea of what i was going to capture but just saw a sky that kept getting more interesting the farther I went.

There’s a bridge out here that carries the highway over the Colorado River, way out in the middle of nothing. I’d passed it before without paying much attention. This time a storm was rolling through and the whole scene changed. The clouds were heavy and broken up, the light went flat and moody, and the rock and the steel and the water all fell into the same tone.

So I pulled over and stood there a while before I ever picked up the camera. That’s usually the tell for me, when a place makes me want to just look at it first. The sky was doing all the work that day, the heavy kind of gray that makes you glad you’re not the one still out driving in it.

I shot it in black and white because there wasn’t any real color to hold onto. There was no warm light to wait for and no blue hour coming, so pulling the color out felt honest to what the place actually was. It let the shapes carry the frame, the arch of the bridge set against the mesa and the road bending off into the weather. Some of my best images come from stops like this one, the ones I never planned to make and almost drove right past.

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