We asked a few of our favorite photographers to share their favorite images of the U.S.—and the stories behind them. Some picked places from across the country, some looked right in their own backyards, but all found something essential to capture about America, the beautiful.
Ecola State Park, Oregon (top)
By Lucy Hewett
On her first trip to the Pacific Northwest, Chicago-based photographer Lucy Hewett met a friend in Seattle and spent a “few days reading aloud from Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist while we drove down winding roads, hiked through rainforests, feasted on oysters, and contemplated views that brought us to tears.” From Portland, Hewett took off on her own, heading to the Oregon Coast. “I packed my bag with left-overs from the restaurant Pok Pok and drove an hour and half to Ecola State Park,” she recalls. “I sat near this outlook for a long time, writing down my thoughts and allowing myself to be comforted by the sounds of the ocean and the vast beauty of the coast.”
Navarro, California
By Tanveer Badal
“Growing up in Los Angeles, I had never ventured past San Francisco in Northern California, where the famed redwood trees reside,” says Tanveer Badal, who snapped this shot of a hiker crossing Mendocino County’s Navarro River on a fallen redwood while on a road trip up California State Route 1 with his wife and infant daughter. “We tossed our 3-month-old in the back of our Subaru Outback and, without any final destination in mind, headed north, ultimately making it to the redwoods. It was an incredible experience to witness those gentle giants.”
Los Angeles, California
By Sam Comen
“This double rainbow emerged from the Hollywood horizon, saturating my neighborhood, Los Feliz, with warm washes and deep shadows,” says Sam Comen. “I’m craned a little too far out of the living room window of the duplex where I’ve lived the past 16 years—and where I spent the first four years of my life.” The image is a bit of a departure for Comen, a documentary portrait photographer by trade. “I don’t often pick up a camera to make pictures of nature or urbanity devoid of people,” he says. “It’s human connection that I seek in my work. But a double rainbow? This was a chance to see—with renewed, sun-screaming appreciation— a place I’ve known for decades.”
Austin, Texas
by Houston Cofield
When Houston Cofield traveled from his home in Memphis to Austin, it wasn’t originally to capture pastoral images of bathers. “I was in Austin to photograph Chuck Norris, of all people, for A+E Network,” he remembers. “After a very long three-day shoot, my assistant and I made a point to go to Barton Springs to spend the afternoon relaxing in the water.” Located within Zilker Metropolitan Park, just outside downtown Austin, Barton Springs Municipal Pool is a public outdoor swimming hole that’s filled by nearby natural springs. The water stays 68 degrees all year round— perfect for beating the Texas heat, and, Cofield adds, “to get away and enjoy solitude.”
Stanley, Idaho
by Greta Rybus
“The Sawtooth Mountains look just like their name, like the crooked teeth of an old saw,” says Boise, Idaho, native Greta Rybus. “In the late summer, wildfire smoke sometimes blows into the valley, creating a perpetual sunset, the sky pinkish and golden. It was on a day like that I took this photo. My best friend was getting married in the public park in the only real town in the valley, Stanley, which has a year-round population of about 70—if you’re being generous. This is the view from that park, right up the hill from the saloon where everyone got a little rowdy the night before. My favorite people were there, in my favorite place, and we ate like queens and danced like monsters, all underneath the smoke and those absurdly magnificent mountains.”
Haleakala National Park, Hawaii
By Levi Mandel
“Maui will forever be my Shangri-La,” says Levi Mandel. “It’s an honest-to-god paradise located smack-dab in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” The New York–based photographer is particularly intrigued by the Road to Hana, a 64.4-mile-long highway along the island’s northeast coast. “The route is narrow, rugged, and, to be honest, dangerous, containing more than 600 curves, one-lane bridges, and barrier-less cliffs.” The reward for those who make it to the end? Oheo Gulch, seen here, which is home to a sequence of waterfalls, also known as the Seven Sacred Pools, that pour off Mount Haleakala.
Pompano Beach, Florida
by Sasha Arutyunova
Moscow-born, New York–based Sasha Arutyunova grew up in Pompano Beach, just north of Miami, and she returns a few times each winter to meet her maternal grandparents, who fly in from Moscow. “My grandpa and I have made a tradition of going on long walks along the shore,” Arutyunova says. “At the end of the walk, grandpa always dives into the water, and I take his picture before following him in.” She goes on to note the paradoxical role the sea plays for her international family. “While my grandpa isn’t an immigrant, he is visiting his daughter, who made a new life here,” she says. “What are the common threads that help us stay connected to our elders who stayed back home? In this case, the ocean is a grand emotional connector as much as it is a physical divide between our homes.”
Grand Canyon National Park
by Arturo Olmos
“I have massive archives of places I’ve been to all over the world,” says Arturo Olmos, who is based in Houston and New York, “but the Grand Canyon in particular always brings me joy and inspiration.” Olmos snapped this photo of his friend Alex Franco near Grand Canyon National Park’s Yavapai Point shortly after sunrise on a chilly January morning. “The warmth of the sunlight against the stones and my friend, in contrast with the cold snow on the ground, gives me the feeling of being around a campfire,” Olmos says. This was the first time either man had seen the canyon, and as Franco told his photographer friend, “When you stand there, take in that sight, and realize that it is a monument millions of years in the making, everything else just fades away.”
Next up: 10 Photographers to Follow If You’re Daydreaming of Your Next Trip
