• Ernest Hemingway.

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As I planned our quick stopover at White Sands National Park, the windy conditions seemed to be a common thread in many of the information sites about the park. I was worried as it was our first extended trip with our daughter. However, it was not a concern as we enjoyed two very calm days at the park with milder temperatures. There were benefits and negatives with these weather conditions.

While the spectacular skies the park is known for were missing during the visit. The thick cloud cover made the morning light much softer, extending our time out on the dunes. I was especially fond of how the soft light helped photograph the vegetation. It was as if the dunes were acting as a giant diffuser softening the ambient light.

As a landscape photographer, f8 or 11 is my go-to aperture to keep sharpness throughout the scene, but for this image, I leveraged the wide aperture of my lens and a 70mm focal length to accentuate the gentle glow on the shrub. I love how the lens gently rendered the background out of focus.

• Lao Tzu.

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It's been a crazy few days with an unexpected job change and my sister suddenly dropping in for a visit that I didn’t get much time to spend on photos. We have managed quite a few trips in the last couple of months, and I am already behind processing them. However, I finally managed to take some time and sort through the photos from White Sands National Park. I hope to post more images from that stunning destination in the next couple of days.

Today’s subject is again the lone tree of White Sands that I managed to find in one of my hikes. I was unhappy with the first day’s image of the tree and returned to it repeatedly, hoping for better light. It turns out that’s the best thing I did during the trip. I managed to capture images of the tree in dramatically different settings. While I have returned to locations before, it was the first time I did so within days, and it surprised me how different the area looked each time I went there. It seems like it would be a practice I will be adding to my travel photography techniques.

• William Shakespeare.

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The moment we entered the White Sands National Park, I knew I wanted an image with the delicate patterns in the sand. It turned out harder than expected. The park, known for wind, was serene during our visit. So footmarks stayed on overnight, and it also meant I had to hike quite deep into the dunes to get decent unbroken patterns. While hunting for a composition, I had the idea to make the composition a bit more interesting by adding some more familiar items from the landscape.

The mountain to the west of the park is a dominant feature that immediately caught my eye, and I decided to use it as my background. With their elongated stems, these Yucca plants were the other elements of the park that I wanted to add to my image. As mentioned earlier, this made the search a bit trickier, but my perseverance paid off. The final image is a simple 16:9 aspect ratio composition with the tripod placed low.