I was photographing the series of richly colored ridges that embrace Zabriskie Point on three sides in overcast mid-afternoon light when I realized that I needed a base layer to make this image work as an expression of color. Normally, I try to avoid placing tourists in landscape photographs. However the red coat of one of these tourists was all about color – and the perfect compliment to the vivid coloration of the ridges making up the next two layers. The backs of the abstracted tourists sitting on the rock wall become my base layer, while the image is completed with two distinctly colored series of ridges in the subsequent layers.