Glenn Oakley, Best Photo Mountain Environment, 2004 Banff Mountain Photography Competition

"Arco, Idaho, is one of those Western towns that was visited by a travelling muralist years ago. For the 25 years that I’ve been passing through Arco, its murals have been slowly peeling and fading away. Somehow that has made them all the more poignant and beautiful, reflecting in an odd way the recent human history of the place.

"Arco is situated near the Lost River Range, which boasts the highest peaks in Idaho. Craters of the Moon National Monument is just thirty minutes up the highway. So in this high desert/mountain landscape where the first nuclear submarine was developed, should it be surprising that the landscapes painted on the basalt block buildings and even the coal bins (as in this photograph) depict something out of New Zealand?"

Glenn Oakley is a landscape and lifestyle photographer based in Boise, Idaho. His work is widely published in such magazines as Outside, Smithsonian and Sunset, as well as in national advertising campaigns. Glenn recently collaborated on a book, Sand Dunes and Sandhill Cranes: Great Sand Dunes and the Wetlands of the San Luis Valley, with writer Susan Tweit for the University of Arizona Press, due out in autumn of 2005.