50 Years at Point Imperial

It would have to have been around August 7th or 8th of 1956.  I was seven.  My family--we were from the east--was traveling the west.  It was the first week of a monthlong vacation touring western cities and national parks.

(In the mid-50s, a trip like this was somewhat exotic for easterners, especially kids.  That Fall, I became an elementary school celebrity because I'd been to California.)

On one of those days--probably August 8--I made my first of what is now, at least, 200 visits to Point Imperial on Grand Canyon's still remote North Rim.  What made this particular visit exciting, however, was not that it was my first.  It was because just a few weeks earlier, right over the canyon, there'd been a horrific collision of two passenger airliners killing 120+ people--at the time, the worst commercial aviation disaster in history.

I insisted that my father point out the spot.  I was disappointed when he couldn't.  

I'd never looked on that day as any sort of benchmark.  I was undoubtedly like most kids visiting Grand Canyon--teenagers, included.  It's a place you get dragged to by your parents.  They just know you'll love it.  You'll be spiritually moved as they are.  Unfortunately, I don't know that I cared much then for sublime or vast or beautiful or magnificent or innerpeace or Imperial or 7 Wonders of the World.  I only cared about seeing where the planes crashed.


And now...heh!...a half century later, I get to see my image www.deviantart.com/view/252371… (taken in the late-90s) from that same Point Imperial on the cover of an Arizona Highways Christmas issue.  And because Rhavethstine rhavethstine.deviantart.com/ --check out his gallery; he haunts many of the Grand Canyon trails I'm familiar with--because he asked about the submission / selection process in getting that image on the cover, it occurred to me that--perhaps--this process started 50 years ago.  


In the strictly factual version, Arizona Highways photo editors, about 7-8 months in advance, will send out a request to the, 100-some photographers on their email list regarding upcoming photographic needs.  Since the content of most issues--the photography and writing--has been assigned long ago, there is little need for stock photos in most issues.

[HINT TO PHOTOGRAPHERS: either learn to write, or team up with someone who does write (that's what I did).  Magazines like concepts, stories.]

However, the HiWays Christmas issue is usually almost all stock submissions.  HiWays tries to make it their best photo issue of the year.  For 2005, the theme was "Spirit of Place".  Unfortunately, I missed the email, so I didn't submit anything.  I wasn't completely unhappy that I hadn't since photo submissions are very tedious clerical exercises, and I no longer actively work at photography. All images require accurate captions.  All images require ID#'s.  (HiWays is apparently leaning towards requiring all images to have a scanable barcode.  They only encourage it now.)  There's a form to fill out, where you list each photo submitted.  Then, the images have to be carefully packed, taken to FedEx and insured.

However, Peter Aleshire, editor of the magazine had seen a low-lying cloud shot by another photographer that he'd liked.   Unfortunately (well, not for me!), the image he'd seen was a 6x18cm panoramic which made it unsuitable for a vertical cover.  So, since I'd had a portfolio in HiWays in Feb. 1998 called "When The Sky Falls" (Clouds in the Canyon), the Photo Director contacted me asking if I had anything he could use on the cover.  

I wasn't about to say 'no', of course.

(The philosophy behind what makes a successful magazine cover is worthy of a separate discussion.)

And that's how my, admittedly unique, image from Point Imperial came to be on the cover of Arizona Highways.  

That, and 200 trips to Point Imperial over 50 years.


So, for myself, looking at that image--looking across a murky, cloud-shrouded Grand Canyon from Point Imperial--I'm looking across 50 years.  No, my life doesn't vividly flash before my eyes.  It remains, like the image, murky and cloud-shrouded.  But, I AM reminded most vividly that I've had a life.  And I can measure 50 years of that life--a half century--by this one image.  

However, if there are any elements from that August, 1956 day contained in this image--well, I'm damned if I can find them.  Yet, I can't help but wonder:  50 years later--from childhood to deep, deep, deep middleage--I'm still at Point Imperial.  

What went right that day?

(Note to anyone who views the December 2005 issue of Arizona Highways: don’t neglect my two page image from Cape Royal just inside the front cover on the Table of Contents pages AND the many other magnificent photos of Arizona throughout the magazine taken by landscape photographers far more eminent than myself such as David Muench, Jack Dykinga, and Larry Ulrich.)

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