Slot canyons offer a glimpse of the divine handiwork of our creator. They are among the wonders of the natural world with a unique mystique rarely seen on earth.

Located within the boundaries of the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona, Antelope Canyon is among the largest of the slot canyons in the American Southwest and the most heavily visited. As such, countless images have been made and articles written about the canyon and through these I have come to know something of the natural beauty of this place.

In April of 2011, I was drawn to the Navajo lands to explore Antelope Canyon for myself and experience the exquisite beauty and stark silence for which slot canyons are so well known. I also knew that photographing the canyons would present a formidable challenge working with heavy photographic equipment in highly constrained workspaces, dealing with extremes in contrast and setting up the right compositions in near total darkness in some areas. It was a challenge I was ready to take on as a photographer.

“Abstractions in Stone” showcases the natural beauty of Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons as I experienced them at different hours of the day. Minute by minute, as the sun moved across the sky, the angle of the light in the canyons would shift. For just a few short minutes, a magnificent scene within the canyon would burst into a luminous panoply of delicate colors propagated by reflected light. Then, almost as suddenly as it appeared, it would fade away as the shifting light would magically light up other sections of the canyon. The images in this book are presented the way they appeared for a moment in time. The same image minutes later would look entirely different. That is why it is nearly impossible to duplicate images made in slot canyons. Each one is a unique composition.