I turned 40 years old last week. It still feels weird saying that. The saying always goes, that once you turn 40, you are over the hill, but I'd like to think I'm on top of it, gazing upon the landscapes and my life ahead of me. In January, my girlfriend suprised me with a 40th birthday celebration. She didn't quite say what we would be doing, but did say that two of the days would invovle photography. The other two days we would be doing something else. That's pretty much the extent of what she told me.
As my birthday drew closer in February , she gave me some hints and eventually spilled the beans that we were heading to Las Vegas for a couple days. and gave me a choice of photographing one of three National Park which were Zion, Joshua Tree, and Death Valley. While they all sounded like lovely choices, I decided on Death Valley. It is both closer to Las Vegas where we flew into, and I felt like it would be less crowded than the other two. We had a red eye flight back home at midnight on Thursday night/Friday morning. Joshua Tree might have been pushing it if I wanted to shoot sunset and Zion, for how beautiful it is, might be a bit more busy.
After a couple days of actually winning some money in Vegas, we rented a car an made our way to Death Valley. I really didn't know what to expect on this trip. I had used google and google maps to research and scout some locations. With about 36 hours in the park, I did have to limit what I could shoot and eventually decided on photographing the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Zabriskie Point, and Badwater Basin. This created a nice variety of possible images and compositions.
The first location was sunset at the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. These are located right along one the main roads in the park so there was a fair amount foot traffic all over the dunes, which meant I had to walk further out if I wanted to limit the amount of footprints in my shots. While there are other dunes in Death Valley that probably have way less foot traffic, they all require higher clearance vehicles and a bit more hiking to access them. Seeing how we didn't have a vehichle with high clearance and we were limited in time, the Mesquite Flats were the best choice.
Climbing sand dunes isn't on my list of favorite things to do and while the ones at this location are very tall, it's still a workout. However the payoff is worth it the further you walk out. I don't have any images of the highly trafficed area, but even being this far out, you can still see some foot traffic. The key for me was to be selective and photograph the areas with limited traffic. There's nothing worse than footprints interupting the clean lines in the dunes.
The image above is one of my favorite images from the trip. And even though there are some footprints, it's not that distracting. When visiting places like Death Valley, it can be tempting to shoot wide to try and get everything in frame. However, by shooting that way, it can be easy to lose the sense of scale. While there are certainly exceptions to this, often this creates a very flat and unispiring image. Most of the time in the dunes, I used my 70-200 telephoto lens. This allowed me to pick out the smaller details in the landscape, focusing on the lines and textures instead of the whole scene.
In the image above, I love the leading line and shadows in the dune and how they guide your eye towards the layered background. I've photographed dunes on a couple times prior during my visits to White Sands National Park and what I love about them is the seemingly endless amounts of original compositions. You would be hard pressed to find two identical compositions from other photographers, unlike a place like Tunnel View in Yosemite. Now there's nothing wrong with photographing those iconic scenes. I would absolutely drop everything for a chance to photograph Tunnel View, but photographing subjects like sand dunes really allow you to be your own photographer instead of trying to copy someone else. While I did have inspiration from other photographers photographing these dunes, I don't think anything I shot here was close to being identical to their work.
Besides trying to find clean lines and uniterupted dunes, I was also looking for areas of shadow and light. Using a telephoto lens, I was able to pick out smaller scenes within the landscape. This helped to create images that are a bit more abstact and often include shapes, lines, and contrast.
The areas of shade next to the sunny areas, can create this beautiful contrast of warm and cool tones while also adding some nice depth to the scene. Images are bit more abstract and can take some time to fully understand what you are looking. I tend to sit with these types of images more so than the grand scenic images. It's hard for me to say why, but they feel a bit more personal to me. Maybe its due to my introverted personality.
4o years is off to a pretty good start on both the photography and personal side. I have a few things in store on both fronts which I will be sharing with you all in the not too distanct future. In the mean time, I'll be on top of the metaphorical (sand)hill for as long as I can.
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Have a great day everyone!
Jason
Happy Birthday! Awesome photos. Only you know those marks are footprints, could be birds, etc. Thanks for sharing!
Donna J