If you need a photograph of an Arizona landscape, there isn’t a better first call you can make than to Arizona Highways magazine, as I learned last month while commissioning art for a forthcoming story on surveillance cameras in Phoenix. AH has long been known for spectacular photography and exacting standards, they are one of the few publications that will only reproduce from film transparencies, and makes its seps from vast 80 gig files—it pays off.

Photo Editor Jeff Kida was a enormous help, he hooked me up with several talented people. I eventually worked with affable photographer Jim Marshall.

I actually had half-forgotten about the magazine—it seems to have disappeared from the racks I haunt—but I didn’t realize the ADoT-owned glossy had fallen on hard times—apparently because the magazine is no longer underwritten by the state, but still operates under a charter that does not permit advertising.