We returned from Death Valley a week ago. My previous visit had been near the end of January. (I've been photographing there annually for a bit more than the past two decades.) This late-March visit was quite different from the winter trip. Oddly, the weather was more "interesting" this time, with wind/sand storms, rain, and snow. I'm still working my way though the new photographs, but here are a few to start. I'll add brief background to each.
This morning did not look promising. It was overcast, but since it was our last morning in the park I went out anyway, heading to sand dunes before dawn. It was cloudy, gray... and it even rained a bit. But eventually the sun broke through a gap in the overcast and illuminated this mountains, where it was trying to snow.
There was a serious wind and dust storm late in the previous afternoon. We retreated at first, hoping it might diminish before sunset. But it didn't, so I went out anyway. One of my strategies for photographing in dust storms is to work with a long focal length and try to position myself just outside the maelstrom with the wind more or less at my back.
I'll break with my usual practice and name this location: Titus Canyon. (It is a pretty popular place already, and some of you may even recognize it.) j As a result of a very bad storm last year, the road through this canyon is closed and the only realistic entry is by parking at its outlet and hiking in. I've hiked it a few times in the past, though usually while on the lookout for vehicles coming down the road. I was expecting hike along the road as we entered the canyon, but the severe flooding had utterly obliterated any trace of it over the distance we hiked. It was a pleasure to see this canyon as it must have been before the road was created.
This view stops me every time I pass this location. It looks across a series of rounded and eroded hills and up a gigantic desert wash toward more distant mountains.
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Finally, two more sand storm photographs. Fortunately the wind was coming from behind me, so the sand was blowing out onto the dunes rather than in my direction. It was so windy that no tripod was going to be strong enough, so I turned on IS and shot handheld while leaning on a stationary object. Even so, there was too much wind to hold the camera still, so I tried to time exposures for moments when the wind decreased just a bit.
Jeffrey wrote:
Very nice set of images, Dan. You're a mountain man turned into a desert rat!
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junglialoh wrote:
Last two catch my attention immediately - nice set from wonderland
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racoll wrote:
Outstanding series, Dan! I always look forward to your posts!
Andy
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Thanks to all three of you!
Jeffrey, for decades I couldn't imagine that any landscape could be as fascinating as the Sierra Nevada, my "outdoor home." I thought that the desert (which, of course, I had barely experience) was a boring, empty place. Then a series of coincidences took my to DVNP twice between 20 and 25 years ago. The first occasion was a trip with my kids' hiking and biking club, a group that had been doing extensive summer trips throughout the Western US and Alaska for years. I went as an adult chaperone on a weeklong adventure in DVNP, long enough to get past my preconceptions and experience a lot of what makes the park special. A few years later, I stopped there again with my youngest son on the way back from delivering our oldest to UCLA... during a great wildflower season. Since that time, I've been going back every year for one or two photography trips. I'm still a mountain guy, but my horizons have expanded!
The two dust storm photographs present a fascinating set of challenges. One, of course, is simply that of making photographs in pretty difficult circumstances. The second is aesthetic. We see a lot of photographs of this sort of subject, and their interpretations of the subject vary widely — from fairly realistic renderings to those that treat the dunes as the starting point for some fairly radical interpretations.The latter can and do produce an expectation that dunes and conditions among them can appear in ways that, if you been there, are quite fanciful though sometimes compelling. So, given the dissonance between what we're used to seeing in some photographs and what we actually see when we are there, the question of how far to go is sometimes difficult. Make sense?
There are more from this trip, though I'm not sure that I'll post all of them here. In addition to our DVNP time, we took a route across some Southern California mountain areas to photograph wildflowers on our way home. Those aren't DVNP photographs, so I won't add them here.
DaleBerlin wrote:
Very nice set! Really digging that black and white.
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jcw1982 wrote:
Very nice set of images Dan! I really like the last two showing the blowing dust & sand.
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Thanks to all of you. :-)
After photographing that subject several times in past years (and once earlier this year), I'm now leaning toward monochrome being the right choice for it. The colors in the formation are extremely subtle, and bringing them out more in post takes things in a direction I did not like. :-)
That dust storm was pretty "exciting." And, as usual, more than a bit challenging for photography!
Jimmy321 wrote:
Very nice. Love the sun hitting those mountains.
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Jimmy321 wrote:
Beautiful the way the dusk is blowing across the sand!
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DivineFocus wrote:
All nicely composed and executed. Nice mix of images to give a sense of the place.
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40Driggs wrote:
Really great set! I especially like the badlands shot and the dust storm images were well executed and unique.
Thanks to the four of you!
The light on those mountains was a gift on an otherwise uninspiring morning of gray skies and rain — yes, rain. It was also a reminder that going out even in unpromising conditions is often worth it, and that there's little or nothing to be gained by staying inside on the seemingly-boring days. Something might happen!
Photographing the blowing dust can be a problem depending on a host of things like the strength and direction of the wind, the nature of the light on the dust, how far away it is, and so forth. It all came together on this evening with the wind almost at my back — thus blowing the sand away from me — along with the low-angle light slanting across the dunes, and there being a nearby elevated location from which to photograph.
Probably because I have photographed in Death Valley so much over more than two decades, I think I am getting a pretty good sense of the place at this point!
As I may have written in the post, that badlands scene has challenged me for a few years now. I always stop there, but often look at it and think something along the lines of, "impressive but hard to make a photograph out of it." I feel like it came together this time... though I also think I'm not quite done with that scene.
