About

My Desert Lens is my photography and storytelling blog — a place where red rock, big skies, and quiet trails tend to get more attention than people, traffic, or sensible hiking temperatures.

What started as a simple urge to photograph the Desert Southwest gradually turned into something more: an ongoing attempt to capture not just how the desert looks, but how it feels. The stillness before sunrise in Arches. The echoing silence along a Canyonlands rim. The strange magic of snow dusting sandstone — a sight so beautiful it almost makes you forget how cold your fingers are.

I’ve been exploring and photographing canyon country for decades, drawn to its solitude, geology, and the way light transforms the landscape by the minute. While much of my work centers around southern Utah — especially the Moab area — my wanderings regularly take me beyond state lines into the deserts of Nevada, California, and Arizona, always chasing new light, new textures, and new reasons to set my alarm for unreasonable hours.

While photography is at the heart of My Desert Lens, the blog also weaves in personal stories, trail reflections, occasional humor, and the realities of desert wandering — including long drives, early alarms, frozen tripods, and the fine art of convincing loved ones that hiking in winter conditions is “fun.”

Every photograph and story shared here is my original work, created with a deep respect for the land and a hope that others might feel inspired to explore it — or at the very least, appreciate it from a warm chair with a good cup of coffee.

Robert F. Riberia