• George Burns.

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While driving to New Mexico en-route to White Sands National Monument, I checked the weather conditions at the park as I couldn’t believe my luck. On the days we were visiting, the park was supposed to have very little wind activity with decent enough cloud cover. I was more concerned about wind as, in my experience, it can make dunes an extremely unpleasant place to be in little time. Thankfully the wind forecast was correct, but the cloud cover was way thicker than I expected, and this posed a problem at a park where contrast is hard to come by.

I took this image during a sunset at the Alkali flats trail, a rather popular trail in the park. Unfortunately, I struggled to get a contrasty foreground even on a clear day during golden hour. After applying dodge and burn to the extend I am willing to go, there is precious little contrast in the foreground, even in a well-exposed image. It was my first time experiencing something like this, and after a good bit of frantic research at the motel room, I think I came across why the White Sands are tricky to shoot. Unlike most dunes, the white color of the gypsum sand reflects any available light, brightening the shadows considerably. I was able to counter this by employing my polarizing filter, which made a lot of difference in my images.