Grand Canyon National Park, AZ.

At 23 years old, I witnessed a thunderstorm roll across the Grand Canyon and naively adopted the near-impossible quest of capturing an exposure of a bolt of lightning dancing above the world’s largest canyon.

You may be surprised to learn that witnessing lightning from the rim of the Grand Canyon is not as hard as you may think – thunderstorms roll over the arid landscape on a near-daily basis during the summer months. However, capturing lightning in a photograph as the key focal point of an overall composition while also maintaining miles of clarity in the middle of a storm – this is nearly impossible. Ten years, three trips, and countless exposures, I was finally able to realize my vision: Infinite = the eons required for the canyon to be carved and shaped. Instant = the fraction of a second the lighting bolt was present.

Beyond this image, the takeaway is the quest the canyon inspired in me and the way nature moves us all to action. Perhaps one of the greatest examples are the words written in a whistle-stop speech from a young president en route to the west coast – words inspired by witnessing the same Canyon for the first time, a prelude to the actions that same president would take 5 years later to preserve the canyon and change the course of conservation forever. In my humble opinion, the most relevantly adoptable mantra of his and perhaps our generation.

“Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you…” –Theodore Roosevelt May 6, 1903