Inspiration tree and the fight against AI images.

On my second-ever trip to The Wave, I happened to capture a photo of an interesting-looking tree. A week or two later, on another visit, I noticed that one of its branches had fallen after a storm. I realized that while the rock formations in the area would remain unchanged for eons, the seasonal landscape would undergo subtle transformations. This realization sparked the idea for this book.

If I took the time to observe and capture the little details along the way, I could document the changing seasons. At the start, I didn’t have a clear vision that this project would eventually result in a book—one shaped by about 60 hikes to The Wave over just over a year—but I knew that if I kept paying attention to these changes, the eventual outcome would be worth sharing.

I followed the gradual fall of this tree for 13 months. It appears as the first image in the book and also as the last. Barely a month after the book was published, the tree finally collapsed, and now it hardly resembles what it once was. It’s bittersweet that I can no longer track its progress, but in a way, it perfectly illustrates the inevitable truth that all things eventually change.

This truth also became the second inspiration behind this photography book: the battle against AI. Increasingly, the most widely shared images of national parks and natural wonders are AI-generated. I don’t like it, but it’s happening. While these images aren’t always great, they’re improving rapidly. In a world where image creation is evolving so quickly, I wanted to take a stand for real photography. I date-stamped each image and did my best to present them exactly as they were experienced on those days—no edits, no filters, no tricks—just the light as it was in that moment. I hope it serves as a chronicle of what the overall hike looked like in that year and that it can be compared for years to come.