Art exhibit: Photographer Dan Dootson shoots the Colorado Plateau July 21, 2010

Edmonds photographer Dan Dootson’s exhibition “Mother Earth Father Sky; Images 280 Million Years in the Making” shows through August 26. Dootson also works as a Visual Communications Specialist at the college. The exhibit features photos taken in the high desert of the Colorado Plateau by Dootson over the past five years on eight trips through southern Utah and Arizona. The photos capture the rainbow of colors in the layers of sandstone, mudstone, shale, salts, and limestone that are the result of 280 million years of sedimentation, uplift, and erosion.

To get the pictures, Dootson hiked 264 miles covering 17,257 feet of ascent and descent and traveled 545 miles by houseboat in temperatures ranging from 25 to 103 degrees. He took the photos in the short days of September, October, and November to capture the light of long shadows and canyon glow. The deep blue color in the pictures comes from the haze free skies at altitudes of 3,000-9,000 feet and the use of a polarizing filter.