{"id":1498,"date":"2010-11-29T16:54:11","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T00:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/articles\/photographing-death-valley\/"},"modified":"2019-11-29T11:09:46","modified_gmt":"2019-11-29T19:09:46","slug":"photographing-death-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/2010\/11\/29\/photographing-death-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Photographing Death Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year I lead a workshop in Death Valley.\u00a0 We offer personalized instruction and photograph some of the many exciting locations there.\u00a0 Click here for more information<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"death_valley_reflections_2009\"<\/a>Now, the only time you want to be in Death Valley is late fall through early spring.\u00a0 Otherwise it\u2019s just too darn hot.\u00a0 Personally, I like February.\u00a0 It\u2019s kind of a quite time and we\u2019ve had some mighty good luck the last couple of years with major rainfall in the weeks leading up to the workshop.\u00a0 What this has meant for us is some of the playas were flooded.\u00a0 When that happens you have lakes six inched deep that spread for miles in every direction.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t take a lot of rain to flood the playas either.\u00a0 Generally an inch will do.<\/p>\n

There are some locations in Death Valley that I really love and I\u2019d like to share them with you.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Zabriskie Point<\/h3>\n

\"Zabriskie<\/a>I think Zabriskie Point is my absolute favorite place to shoot in Death Valley.\u00a0 I remember the first time I shot there.\u00a0 It was during the first workshop I ever attended and I was really overwhelmed.\u00a0 All I could see was an intimidating expanse of badlands eroded into chaotic forms.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t notice the subtle colors in what appeared to be uniformly tan mudstone.\u00a0 But I did my best and actually came away with a couple of winners.<\/p>\n

I prefer shooting Zabriskie before sunrise, especially if a golden glow is developing in the eastern sky.\u00a0 I like this light the best and for a long time, while I shot both sunrise and sunset, I only got photographs that I really liked from sunrises.\u00a0 But that\u2019s changed in the past year or two.\u00a0 Still, my favorite light still is the twilight you get when the sun is below the horizon, whether that be the eastern or the western horizon.<\/p>\n

\"zabriskie_point_8_2008\"<\/a>As I\u2019ve grown more familiar with Zabriskie Point I\u2019ve begun to realize the fantastic abstracts one can make there.\u00a0 And these abstracts can take on a wide range of moods from harsh chaotic scenes to comforting peaceful ones.\u00a0 So Zabriskie point is always worth two sessions whenever I\u2019m in the valley \u2013 sunrise and sunset.<\/p>\n

My plan is to take a weekend and spend the whole time at Zabriskie from the dark of dawn to the dark of dusk.\u00a0 I want to see it in its best light and its worst light (if there is such a thing).\u00a0 I think that would be a wonderful experience and I would learn a lot about this magical place.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

Devils Golf Course<\/h3>\n

Devils Golf Course is a really strange place.\u00a0 If you want chaos this has it in spades, even more so than Zabriskie Point.\u00a0 It\u2019s arguably the most intimidating place to shoot in the Valley.\u00a0 It\u2019s a seemingly endless sea of large slabs of salt six inches thick that are fractured and shoved up against each other.\u00a0 It\u2019s also a very risky place to walk.\u00a0 The footing is very uneven and falling on the salt would be like falling on lava with the added pain of having salt rubbed into your wounds.<\/p>\n

\"devils_golf_course_2009\"<\/a>It\u2019s also a very hard place to photograph, at least I haven\u2019t gotten the knack of it yet.\u00a0 That\u2019s not to say that there aren\u2019t some great shots out there; there definitely are.\u00a0 But you\u2019re going to work to find them.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have any favorite time of day except that I\u2019d probably stay away from mid-day.\u00a0 Sunrise and sunset would probably work just the same.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t try walking out there in the dark though.\u00a0 That wouldn\u2019t be very smart.<\/p>\n

This photograph was taken at the end of a overcast, rainy day.\u00a0 We were very fortunate that the sky to the west was just barely starting to clear and the sun turned the clouds delicate a rose color for, oh,\u00a0 maybe 60 seconds.\u00a0 I also felt fortunate to have found a foreground that had something of a leading line to draw the eye into the image.\u00a0 Given the unlikelihood of the weather and the difficulty\u00a0 of the location, it turned out pretty well.\u00a0 But boy, you really get the sense of the salt chaos going on forever, don\u2019t you.<\/p>\n

Mesquite Flats Dunes<\/h3>\n

Photographing sand dunes can be more challenging that it would seem.\u00a0 First, if there\u2019s any breeze at all you need to be really careful about getting sand in your camera and lenses.\u00a0 I encourage people to decide what lens they will be using before they head out on the sand and plan on not changing it once they get out there.\u00a0 If the conditions are calm then if you\u2019re very careful you can change lenses.\u00a0 But personally I\u2019m very cautious of that.\u00a0 I just keep thinking what would happen if a tiny grain of sand got stuck in the camera\u2019s shutter mechanism.<\/p>\n

\"mesquite_flats_dunes\"<\/a>Both wide angle and telephoto lenses work well on the dunes.\u00a0 Wide angles will give some great near-far compositions while telephotos will allow you to zero in on interesting vignettes.<\/p>\n

The Mesquite Flats Dunes are situated in such a way that they are good for both sunrise and sunset.\u00a0 I prefer sunrise as any breeze during the night may have wiped out some of the thousands of footprints that accumulate there.\u00a0 And if you\u2019re fortunate to have a hard blow overnight and a calm morning you\u2019ll have pristine dunes to photograph.<\/p>\n

Like I said, I prefer sunrise but that poses the challenge of walking the half mile or so across the desert in the dark to be in position when the light begins to break.\u00a0 It\u2019s a thrill to have them appear before you just as the sky becomes bright enough to see outside the little pool of light created by your headlamp.<\/p>\n

Dunes offer compositions that include line, form, pattern and texture.\u00a0 In fact, dunes offer pretty much the opposite of the chaos of Zabriskie Point and Devils Golf Course.\u00a0 Curved lines abound.\u00a0 Ripples of sand provide wonderful patterns with fascinating textures when the sun is low in the sky.<\/p>\n

Dante\u2019s View<\/h3>\n

\"Danet's<\/a>If you want a grand view of the Valley, Dante\u2019s View is one of the best locations.\u00a0 It\u2019s right above Bad Water and Telescope Peak is directly across from it.\u00a0 To the right the valley is laid out below you and disappears into the desert haze.\u00a0 The great salt pans make winding patterns on the Valley floor.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve shot Dante\u2019s View at both sunrise and sunset.\u00a0 I tend to prefer sunrise (there seems to be a pattern here).\u00a0 Telescope Peak and the Panamint Range will get first light at sunrise.\u00a0 At sunset they\u2019ll be in deep shadow although if there is a bank of spectacular clouds that pop when the sun gets under them you wouldn\u2019t want to miss that.<\/p>\n

This is a perfect location for panoramas.\u00a0 From up here one can really get the feeling of how vast Death Valley really is.\u00a0 It\u2019s also fascinating to sit up here and try to imaging what the Valley looked like 10,000 years ago at the end of the ice age when it was filled with Lake Manley.\u00a0 The lake stretched more than 100 miles from south to north and must have been an awesome sight.<\/p>\n

In February it may not be possible to get up there.\u00a0 Dante\u2019s View is high enough that a passing winter storm could drop snow on it and the road would be too icy.\u00a0 The park rangers will have the road closed if the conditions are too dangerous so it\u2019s best to check at the park visitor station in Furnace Creek before heading up.<\/p>\n

Racetrack<\/h3>\n

\"Death<\/a>One of the highlights to any trip to Death Valley is a visit to Racetrack Playa.\u00a0 It\u2019s not always possible to get back there and not just because of the rough 27 mile drive dirt road.\u00a0 The playa can be flooded if there has been any appreciable rain.\u00a0 And when it\u2019s flooded you can\u2019t go out on it.<\/p>\n

Back to the road. To give you an idea of just how rough it is the Park Service recommends you take two, that\u2019s right, two spare tires with you .\u00a0 In the two times I\u2019ve been back there to date I\u2019ve heard of two vehicles with punctured tires.\u00a0 Fortunately they weren\u2019t mine.<\/p>\n

Racetrack Playa gets its name because the playa is shaped like an oval race track and at the north end an outcropping of rock forms the grandstand.\u00a0 In fact, that\u2019s what it\u2019s called \u2013 the Grandstand.<\/p>\n

\"wanderer_2008\"<\/a>But if it\u00a0 weren\u2019t for the mysterious moving rocks few people would hazard a trip back there.\u00a0 The rocks come tumbling off a cliff at the south east corner of the playa and then move literally for miles leaving trails behind them.\u00a0 It\u2019s obvious from the trails that the playa surface was wet and slick when the rocks moved.\u00a0 But what\u2019s not so obvious is how they move.\u00a0 No one has ever observed them in motion but many theories abound and the debate continues to this day in the geological community.\u00a0 My favorite theory is that they are blown around by very high winds during severe winter storms.<\/p>\n

The rocks still move on a fairly regular basis.\u00a0 In general they\u2019ll move within a three year period.\u00a0 In other words, rocks that were tagged were found in a different location a couple of years after the tagging.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve only photographed this location during late afternoon.\u00a0 The sun will set behind the peaks to the west fairly early so you can photograph in nice soft light.\u00a0 You\u2019ll probably walk several miles across the playa in search of the rocks as the playa is very large and the rocks are spread out.<\/p>\n

One disturbing thing you\u2019ll see is that the rocks are getting carried off by thoughtless people.\u00a0 In fact I\u2019ve seen vehicle tracks on the playa where people have driven out there to make it easier to pilfer the rocks.\u00a0 Not only are they disgusting, greedy people but they\u2019re lazy to boot.<\/p>\n

A dream of mine is to spend the night out there in the campsite about a half mile south of the playa.\u00a0 That way I could get both a sunset and sunrise.\u00a0 I think that would be awesome.<\/p>\n

There are many more places to photograph in Death Valley that I haven\u2019t touched on here.\u00a0 We catch these and others in our three day Death Valley workshop.\u00a0 In 2011 the dates are February 12-15.\u00a0 Come along and join the fun.\u00a0 Click here for more information.<\/a><\/p>\n

Join me on an upcoming workshop.\u00a0 Click here for more details.<\/a><\/p>\n

To see more of my photographs click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

(5641)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Death Valley is a wonderful location to photograph and here are a few of my favorite places.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,8],"tags":[32,87,92,199],"class_list":["post-1498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-workshops","tag-california","tag-death-valley","tag-death-valley-national-park","tag-photography-workshops"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Nl7-oa","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4706,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions\/4706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ralphnordstromphotography.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}