The first time someone asked me about the best place to photograph the sunset, I advised, “well, most folks would say up at Delicate Arch.” Though that information was accurate, and that person probably came away with a memorable photo, I’ve since come to feel that I could have conveyed more. Read on.

Composition is one of the first ways to improve those photographs. Look at a really good photograph and you’ll find the subject is placed off-center, and probably falls along the imaginary line that connects the opposite corners of the frame. Or, imagine a grid in your viewfinder that sections the frame into thirds top to bottom and right to left. Now, place your subject at the intersection of a horizontal line and a vertical line. That’s called the Rule of Thirds, and it’s a good one to follow. Place a foreground subject on one of those intersections and a background subject on the opposite intersection, and you may find that friends start asking for copies of your photos.

Fill that frame! If your subject fills only 10 percent of the picture, the other 90 percent probably is wasted on uninteresting matter — not the making of a high-quality shot. If you need to move in closer, do it. You might want to get a zoom lens or a longer focal length lens.

Eliminate unnecessary objects. See what your lens sees. Is there a yucca plant that seems to be sticking out of the top of someone’s head? Is the red car in the background more obvious than the kids in front of the arch? Have you included too many points of interest, to the detriment of them all?

Basic rule: keep it simple.

A photograph is not about an object, it is about light on an object. The best photographic light occurs early in the morning and late in the afternoon, as the lower angle of light gives your subject depth and a greater sense of reality. The warmth of the light deepens the redness of the rock into amazing hues, the very reason this land is often called “color country.”

The features listed in the table below will serve as fine starting points for your photographic odyssey. Those places should keep your eyes — and shutter fingers — busy, but remember, they are just the starting points. Countless other opportunities will present themselves if you keep an open mind and simply respond to that place within you that says, “Wow, look at that!”

Watch Your Step

This land is every bit as fragile as it is beautiful. If you step off the trail or away from the pullout, you may injure our living land. When biological soil crust is damaged, it can take centuries (literally) to heal (see page 6 for more information). Allow others who will be inspired by your photos to come and see this land as Nature intended: organic and alive.