SHOOT FOR THE SKY

A PORTFOLIO BY BERNHARD MICHAELIS PRECEDING PANEL: Monsoon storm clouds gather at sunset over an ancient volcanic landscape near Flagstaff. "I was looking north and focusing on the remnants of a pueblo wall," photographer Bernhard Michaelis recalls. "Not until I turned around did I spot the approaching monsoon storm to the south."

BERNHARD MICHAELIS FIRST CAME TO THE SOUTHWEST

As a student from his native Germany, when he was researching a thesis about traditional Hopi education. After he received his degree, he stayed here, providing job training and implementing curricula at Head Start centers on tribal lands in the 1980s and '90s. His photography grew out of that work, but also out of his love of exploring Northern Arizona landscapes. “Back then, the only way to get down into Antelope Canyon was to rappel down with a rope, and it was still possible to stay and camp out at 'The Wave' for a week at a time before it became an item on everybody's bucket list,” he recalls.

But Michaelis was different back then, too. “I hadn't developed the skill set to do justice to the beauty that surrounded me,” he says. Now, making photos isn't just a hobby — it's a cornerstone of his life. Arizona Highways readers might recall that Michaelis won our annual photo contest in 2018 with a shot of a Northern Arizona cinder field. That setting was also the focus of a 2015 exhibition of Michaelis' work at Northern Arizona University.

It's a landscape Michaelis knows well, because it's also his home. He lives in an off-the-grid house in the lava fields around the San Francisco Peaks. “This landscape goes beyond the mere beautiful,” he says. “It evokes a place within that can connect us spiritually to this land. To translate this into photography is what I am ultimately shooting for, but it is not easy to accomplish.” The photos in this portfolio (and on the front cover) are among those Michaelis has accumulated during his time in Arizona. But he's far from satisfied. “One needs to keep on experimenting with and studying the craft,” he says. And here, he quotes Ansel Adams, who knew the craft better than most: “Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.”

Rolling storm clouds approach a section of textured "brain rock" in the remote Vermilion Cliffs National Monument in extreme Northern Arizona. "I was revisiting this location after discovering it more than 30 years earlier, and I took the dramatic clouds and the continuously changing light as a welcoming sign," Michaelis says. "After this shot, I rushed back to the parking lot and made it out of the area just before a drenching thunderstorm arrived and made the jeep trail impassable." AH