My timing is perfect. I spend the weekend at home, soaking up family time. Monday I fly back into San Angelo and just barely pick up my rental car when the phone rings.

“The women have been kicked out of the shelter, separated from their children. Get to the ranch immediately. The FLDS are going to let us in.”

Wow. Can you even imagine the idea of the FLDS holding a press conference, let alone letting us onto their sacred YFZ Ranch? The place where they’ve built their temple? To think that just a few days ago my helicopter ride over the YFZ was the best access I’d ever had.

I get there quick and a huge media convoy is lined up at the gate waiting to get in. We wait, and wait. An FLDS guy at the gate is keeping a list of which networks and newspapers everyone is with. They are keeping us waiting until a crew from a certain Utah news outlet shows up. The sun is getting lower and the national media are getting very cranky, complaining to the FLDS guy at the gate about making us wait.

I find out later that the people we were waiting for were at a grocery store filling prescriptions and buying oranges. I guess they didn’t know that CNN, the networks, and even People Magazine were waiting on them.

There are many photos from this first-ever FLDS media event. (It was the first ever, right?) So I’m just going to go through them in the order they were shot (and there will be more posts to come). Here’s what I saw when we drove onto the ranch and up to the building where everything would happen:

These women had arrived back home at the YFZ Ranch earlier today after CPS separated them from their children.

They lined up and watched as the media unloaded their gear and got set up. We were all unsure as to how this would take place. Up until now, the FLDS didn’t talk, so what would happen?

Rod Parker (above) gave the women some tips, which from memory amounted to telling them to simply tell their stories. Parker advised all of the media to not stand too close and not crowd in on anybody. You know, not swoop in and swarm anyone like a big media pack will often do. We all agreed, but after a few minutes it was just a big mingle and everyone on all sides seemed okay with that.

I started out photographing this woman as she told her story. Other women (mostly younger) stayed up on the balcony. Maybe they weren’t in any condition to talk about what had happened.

I focused in on this woman, Sally, who was talking about how the women were separated from their children:

Tears in her eyes.

I’ve heard from people that they felt the FLDS didn’t seem to cry enough when talking about their kids being taken, that there were no tears in their eyes.

I can only point out the situation as I have before: these are mothers who had their children taken away. Thousands of years of human history tell us that whether or not the removal of the children was justified or not, the mothers will be devastated.

You can argue about the right or wrong of it. My role is to illustrate the story, nothing more.

There were a few FLDS members still on the ranch. Like the woman (or man?) in the photo above watching me with binoculars.

Most were men, but then here’s a woman in a blue dress looking off a balcony.

Here are four men walking to a building. Notice the numbers painted on the sidewalk. These were markings made by law enforcement to track the various buildings on the ranch.

I started photographing this group of men…

…as they walked across the ranch.

They approached this building and gathered with others.

Law enforcement from local, state, and federal agencies had set up a base at the FLDS temple.

A guy with a camera was at the top of the temple steps…

…and you can see the door which was breached.

I saw these guys from afar, seated against the wall. I thought they may have been detainees but they’re just cops eating dinner.

Here’s the chow line. And here is something that’s never been reported. I just noticed it while editing through the aerial photographs…

This guy in the yellow shirt, it looks like his dinner blew away and he had to reach down and grab it. Then, at the end there, he drops something else. Breaking news!

Here are police at the main entrance to the ranch on county road 300.

We had been told that the airspace over the YFZ Ranch was shut down for another week, meaning that we wouldn’t be able to get any aerial shots until then. Since we had no expectation that the FLDS would ever allow us onto their most private of property, shots from the air were the only way we could see the place and try understand the situation. I got a sudden call late on April 8th from another photographer, telling me that there was a guy with a small helicopter giving people flights over the ranch. The airspace had unexpectedly opened. I ran to the car and hurried over to Eldorado before the sun went down.

The first thing you notice is the massive scale of the YFZ Ranch. The amount of labor it must have taken to build this place…

Notice that the garden areas are built up on about three feet of topsoil that was trucked in and put down over the natural rocky ground.

It’s like a small town, with its own maintenance facilities, etc.

A new guard tower was under construction. Here’s the view of the guard tower looking up the only road in or out.