Half a Century Of Seeing Utah Through a Lens
BY TOM WHARTON SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

TAYLORSVILLE -- Fast-food franchises now fill many of Utah's once quiet byways. Lake Powell has covered up the wonders of Glen Canyon, probably forever. Ribbons of pavement lead to once hard-to-reach hamlets. And scenes that used to be glimpsed only by hardy hikers or a rancher searching for a lost cow now grace covers of national magazines.
In a career of almost 50 years, Utah photographer Frank Jensen has documented the changes. He shot film for Channel 4, participated in The Salt Lake Tribune's Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of a 1956 airplane crash in the Grand Canyon and shot photos for Time, Newsweek and Sunset. His work has graced dozens of Utah Travel Council publications.
In the early days, he saw Utah in a way younger journalists can only imagine. As a staffer for the Salt Lake Tribune, he shot photos of Glen Canyon the year before it was flooded. "Lake Powell might be one of the wonders of the West," he says today. "But there was nothing like Glen Canyon any other place in the world."
On that 1960 trip, Jensen watched in wonder as people launched everything from motorized rafts to inner tubes down the Colorado River. He recalls taking a Willys Jeep on a dirt road to a campground near the balanced rock of what was then Arches National Monument.
Jensen and a buddy had 1,000 feet of Kodachrome movie film to burn, so he took his old Bell and Howell camera and went to work. He remembers when the highway pavement ended at Moab, leaving much of southeastern Utah an unexplored mystery. He spent six months in the early 1960s making a documentary film, "The Two Worlds of the Navajo," and won a national award for the effort.
"My first trip into the Escalante country was a horseback trip," recalls Jensen. "The canyon didn't seem as cluttered. You could get a horse in." At one point, the horse became mired in quicksand. Jensen managed to get the struggling animal out. As a reward, his mount rolled on Jensen's camera, squashing it flat. "That is why I always take two cameras wherever I go."
Another lesson, learned from a lifetime photographing the outdoors: "Get up early and shoot late. Take a nap during the middle of the day. Everything depends on light."
When asked if he ever worried about identifying a special place that would be ruined by publicity, Jensen smiles and admits to occasionally lying about the exact location of some photos. He gets angry at the number of people posting photos of remote Escalante slot canyons on Web sites.
Now 73 and white-bearded, he still works hard at photography. He regularly backpacks into favorite locations and loves shooting photos of people fishing, mountain biking or hiking.
Did any of his work ever make a difference in saving a special place? Jensen demurs, saying only that a television documentary he made on a proposed Bridge Canyon dam that would have partially flooded the Grand Canyon might have helped kill that project.
It would be understandable for Jensen to harp on the past, on the days when things were simpler, quieter and more pristine. Instead the veteran photographer peers forward with undimmed creativity. When asked if he has a favorite shot, he is quick with an answer. "My favorite picture is the next one, always the next one."

The Salt Lake Tribune ran this article on Frank Jensen in Highways and Byways in March of 2000.

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