TimePunk Pet Photography

06/07/2026

Guardsman Pass is great in every season. I know that Fall is the 'insta-perfect' time of year, but I love it all year round (even when I almost keel over snowshoeing up the road in winter!) The aspens were just starting to leaf out, which is one of those brief periods in the mountains when everything looks undecided.

Winter isn't quite finished. Summer hasn't fully committed. The ground is wet, the air still has a little bite to it, and every dog within fifty miles is finding new mud to step in.

Naturally, Stella found all of it.

A few minutes before this photo she was charging through a marshy section of the meadow with the kind of confidence usually reserved for people who don't have to wash the truck afterward. Then she climbed up on this boulder and started scanning the trees as if she'd been appointed Director of Wilderness Affairs.

Dogs do that sometimes. One minute they're hip-deep in mud. The next they're standing on a granite pedestal looking like they've come to deliver a speech about the fate of civilization.

The speech, as far as I could tell, was mostly about squirrels. 🐿️

06/05/2026

While I was waiting for the sun to drop into the right spot for some side-light experiments at Wheeler Farm, I figured I should probably point the camera at the two dogs I brought with me.

Magnus thought this was an excellent plan.

Aksel was less convinced.

To be fair, a giant black cylinder with a piece of glass on the front isn't the most reassuring thing in the world when it's pointed directly at you. So I switched to a longer lens and backed up far enough that I stopped looking quite so much like an overly enthusiastic wildlife documentary crew.

That seemed to help.

The funny thing about photographing brothers is that they often have completely different opinions about the same situation. Magnus was ready to clock in immediately. Aksel took a little more negotiating. Once he realized nobody was asking him to pose for a driver's license photo, things got easier.

A few minutes later I got this. Two springers sitting in the middle of the road, watching the world go by while we waited for better light.

Not a bad way to spend an evening.

05/09/2026

Zion is exactly what people say it is.

Big, crowded, worth seeing at least once (and really, worth seeing many times, but I highly recommend winter!)

You can bring a dog, but not very far, and not with much room to wander. Step outside the park, though, and the landscape doesn’t change much, just the rules.

That’s where Scamper and Loki did their best work.

They don’t care how far I drove to get there.

They just want to know I showed up with something worth eating.

05/07/2026

The morning didn’t give us much in the way of light.

Clouds rolled in early and stayed put, flattening everything out just enough to take the edge off the cliffs in the distance.

Still, that view from the LaVerkin overlook does what it does.

I lived in Virgin for a while, years ago, and that stretch of road still gets me every time.

Scamper held steady. Loki checked in for carrots.

We stayed a while anyway.

05/04/2026

Snow Canyon has a way of making you feel like you’ve seen something big without having to work too hard for it.

You walk a little, climb a little, and suddenly you’ve got layers of rock stretching out in every direction.

Scamper and Loki didn’t seem especially impressed.

They were more focused on whether I was reaching into my pocket or just pretending to.

Fair enough.

05/01/2026

You don’t have to go very far outside of Zion before things start to open up.

Same red rock, same kind of terrain, just fewer signs telling you where you can and can’t stand with a dog.

Loki took the higher ground. Scamper stayed closer, keeping an eye on things and checking in often enough to make sure we were still part of the plan.

Between the two of them, the pace made sense.

And for dogs who were mostly interested in exploring, that was exactly what we needed.

04/29/2026

Some dogs pose. Others just walk straight through whatever you’re trying to set up.

Scamper fell somewhere in the middle.

She’d give me a look, take a few steps forward, pause just long enough to see if it was worth continuing, and then keep going. No drama, no urgency, just a steady pace that worked better than anything I could have directed.

This is usually where sessions settle in. You stop trying to control it, and the dog starts doing something more interesting on their own.

Also, this is around the point where the carrot negotiations get serious.

04/27/2026

There’s a point in Snow Canyon where the rock just rises up enough to make a small dog feel like they’re in charge of the whole desert.

Scamper found that spot pretty quickly and decided it was hers. No pacing, no second guessing, just a quiet “this will do” and a long look out over the sandstone.

We were still getting started, still figuring out how the light was going to behave, and she was already locked in.

Older dogs don’t waste time on things that don’t matter. They find the view, hold it for a minute, and move on.

Carrots helped, but not as much as you’d think (or possibly more than you might think if your dogs aren't fans of raw vegetables!)

04/22/2026

Family stuff has kept me occupied as of late, but I finally had a chance to catch up on a Great Adventure I had earlier this Spring. :-)

Exploring Snow Canyon State Park with dogs near Zion, finding red rock landscapes, open space, and better adventures beyond national park restrictions.

03/27/2026

Snow Canyon was starting to cool off by the time Loki found this spot and stood there like he had personally approved the whole landscape.

March has been oddly warm this year, so that last bit of evening light felt especially good. The sun had dropped behind the canyon walls, the red rock was softening into those dusty sunset tones, and Loki was fully in his element. He has a real talent for looking both very fluffy and very official, which turned out to be perfect for a place that already feels a little unreal.

One of my favorite things about Snow Canyon State Park is how much variety it packs into one dog-friendly adventure. You get petrified sand dunes, big red rock formations, lava fields, and all these layered textures that make every turn feel different. Zion gets most of the attention in this part of southern Utah, but for dogs, Snow Canyon is such a good reminder that the less famous park can sometimes be the better outing.

Also, I respect Loki’s commitment to posing like a tiny arctic cloud dropped into the desert for research purposes.