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| Anza Borrego State Park, California |
Another day, another playground made of sand. A playground for kids (young and old), a playground for photographers. Let the play begin!
The extensive dune field near Stovepipe Wells is by far the most heavily visited sand dune complex within Death Valley National Park, but even here you can find great views within a few short steps of the parking lot.
One of the things I like about traveling to Utah is that I get to pass through the Eastern Sierra and Death Valley on my way out and/or back! In this case I visited a few spots to re-take some old shots with my new camera.
Dune fields in particular can be exciting to re-shoot. Not only do the dunes themselves change, but the light changes literally from minute to minute, so not only are your shots new compared to the last visit, but you'll get entirely different results at different times of day.
It's particularly rewarding to shoot dunes in Death Valley, where a little sweat equity will get you to remote sands untouched by human footprints. Just make sure that you visit at a time of year when the weather will be mild, and that you bring survival supplies, particularly plenty of water. They don't call it "Death Valley' for nothing!
There are at least 7 sand dune complexes in the Death Valley area, and only the Mesquite Flat dunes at Stovepipe Wells is overrun with photographers and other visitors. Ironically, the dunes at Stovepipe Wells are also probably the smallest (only about 200 feet tall) and take the most effort to reach (a 2 mile walk over sand, probably with high heat to cope with on at least one direction).
I have a new favorite dune shooting location... it's remote and it takes a bit of a walk, but there wasn't a single footprint on this entire dune complex. I won't broadcast the location on the Internet, but join one of my workshops to the area and I'll take you there!
Our dawn shot on this day would be on the Eureka Dunes, onbe of my favorite places to shoot in Death Valley National Park. The shots are far more compelling if you hike up in the dunes, preferably to the top. Even better if you hike with someone and have a subject to shoot, and they can shoot you as well. The surface is actually quite hard, not like beach dunes at all, so wear solid hiking boots that you can occasionally use to kick a foothold into a steep, firm surface. We took 4-5 hours to do the hike including plenty of time for photography. We started hiking with headlamps before the theoretical (level horizon) sunrise time of 6:45 or so, and got to the top of the dunes just after the sun cleared the mountains (about 9?). Ideally I'd want to have 2 mornings here. This time of year the occasional rains and wind can keep the dunes pretty well clean of hiker tracks, enhancing the photographic opportunities.
Less than 30 seconds after I took this picture a jet from China Lake Naval Air Station came screaming around the dunes, on his side in a hard turn, at only a slightly higher elevation than I was standing (about 200-300 feet off the valley floor). I had turned off the camera, so I only caught him departing without much of the dunes in the shot. It would have been great to catch him, close and large, in this image!
Wind moves sand from eroded mountains surrounding the Eureka Valley in Death Valley National Park, piling it up into the Eureka Dunes. Sometimes in the shifting winds the grains sort themselves out by density, creating patterns of dark and light.
Approaching the top of the 700-800 foot tall dunes. Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado may have duens that cover a larger area, but Eureka Dunes rivals Great Sand Dunes in height. Even the National Park Service does not highlight this dune field however, no doubt due to its remote location and the 4WD/high clearance recommendation on its access roads.
On a previous visit I tried driving behind the dunes in my SUV and nearly got stuck, crossing several pits where others had gotten bogged down in the sand and had scattered sticks and rocks in an attempt to get some traction. I turned back as soon as it was practical, stopping along the way to pull out a rear wheel drive pickup that had sunk up to its axle in sand.
I think the dunes make a great backdrop for outdoor portraits. Sometimes fill flash can be helpful if you're close to the subject, but at others you may be able to get some fill light coming off of the sunlit dune faces.
Death Valley National Park
Death Valley National Park
Rhyolite, Nevada
The Virgin River Narrows in Zion National Park
I had been delayed several times in the past few days by my accident with the deer, by a rough 4WD road, and by my flat tire, so now I had to make up time by making the several hundred mile drive from Southeastern Utah to the Death Valley area. Having left Devil's Garden the day before, I entered the park featuring sites such as "The Devil's golf Course" and noticed that AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" was playing on the radio: Living easy, living free
Season ticket on a one-way ride
Asking nothing, leave me be
Taking everything in my stride
Dont need reason, dont need rhyme
Aint nothing I would rather do
Going down, party time
My friends are gonna be there too
I arrived at Death Valley's sand dunes just as the sun was clearing the horizon. I hiked out into the dunes and found a lot of good dune and sand pattern shots.
I also found a lot of other photographers! At times it seemed as if there was a photographer standing on every third dune.
