Coloured Rocks, Muddy Wash

Every year around Christmas, I take time off from whatever I'm doing to make photographs, if even just for a week. In winter, when the days are very short and the air is very clear, the light is a beautiful, pure warm white. The change is subtle, but over the years I have begun to recognize it, and I now look forward to seeing these few weeks of winter light for the entire year.

I was in this small prairie canyon under winter light from a low sun filtered through veil-thin wisps of cloud. The light and the wind had begun to clear the snow from the mud banks, and I could see tiny footprints in the smooth, pressed sand. Even in the harsh plains, in the wind and the cold, the winter sun seemed to coax life from the frozen earth.

I made this photo of some wonderfully coloured stones that had been pressed into the sand and partly exposed again by melt water. They were scattered randomly and wonderfully, and the winter light played across them just enough to yellow the sand and define the scene. In the final print, the tracks of some tiny creature can be seen twisting amongst the pebbles.