Skyline Arch with Tree

The same fin holds Skyline Arch, but here the rock is the backdrop and a tree is the subject — a bare, gnarled snag standing dead-center, its branches spread against the sky.

Photographed June 2003, vertical. The dead tree and the distant arch echo each other — both are about absence, the open space inside them. Graphic and a little haunting, the kind of pairing the desert sets up on its own.