Look. See. Imagine. Create. Mesquite Flat Dunes in Death Valley National Park

We have been fortunate to visit Death Valley eight times over the last 14 years. This past August, the Park suffered damage after the remnants of a hurricane dropped a year’s worth of rainfall in a few hours. The parked was flooded with major road damage and was closed for two months. It just re-opened and the big attraction is Manly Lake which is a rare seasonal lake that forms in Badwater Basin. It was spectacular, but that is a story for another time. This blog post is about a great morning we had at the Mesquite Flat Dunes. Here is how I made this photograph.

LOOK

We arrived at the dune field before dawn. It was still pretty dark, but we got a good look at the entire field. After pulling into the parking lot, I decided that shooting from an elevated location on the road before the parking lot was a better option than the lot itself or walking into the dune field. We parked and waited for the light while searching for some photographic dunes.

SEE

I was fine with this location because I knew we both hard long telephoto lenses and could compress in on the dunes, even though were a quarter to a half mile away. I also knew the sun would come up from the east which was on our right, so I scanned the dune field for some dunes facing east that looked interesting. I must have looked for a good ten minutes and made about 20 images. I kept coming back to this dune and decided that it would be my focus for the sunrise. It was facing the right direction. It had a nice leading line. It also grew in size from foreground to the background. Finally, I knew the mountains behind it would remain relatively dark for a while during sunrise as they are faced north.

IMAGINE

Sand dunes are fun to photograph, but they don’t look like much in flat light of early morning and evening and in bright overhead mid-day light. Dunes need side lighting to show off their shape and texture. So now, I just had to wait for the light.

CREATE

I was getting pretty excited as the composition and light were working well together. I did not have that much more time before the shadows stopped getting darker and would start to lighten up as the sun rose. The light was really yellow and the dunes were glowing. While processing, I darkened the mountain behind the dune. I added some saturation, contrast (to darken the shadows), and some texture to bring out the dunes. From first light to best image was nine minutes, and then it was over.

We have at least ten blog posts about Death Valley if you search for it on this blog site. To see more of and buy our photographs, please go to www.pamphotography.com and check out more of our photos on FLICKR.