White Sands

• Thomas Jefferson.

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While I have always had a fascination with telephoto lenses, I have always been reluctant to try them out for landscape photography. But while visiting White Sands National Park, I found an excellent excuse to use them as my primary landscape tool. Unfortunately, we only spent two days at this beautiful park, and I was hoping that one of those days, we would get to enjoy the brilliant skies that made the state of New Mexico famous among nature photographers. Well, it was not to be. On both days, we had overcast skies, and any color that appeared during sunset was very subdued.

Now, generally, on a location like that, I would naturally reach for my 24-70, but at White Sands, I realized that the wide-angle focal lengths would obscure the little patches of colors in the sky. The only way I could isolate the colors in the sky was by shooting my wide-angle in portrait orientation, and even then, the foreground patterns in the sand often dominated. So, in my frustration, I decided to try my 70-200, and it was the best decision of the trip. I could quickly isolate the small patches of color in the sky with the telephoto. Moreover, they allowed me to compress what looked like miles of white gypsum dunes doing their best imitation of ocean waves. I had a lot of fun shooting these telephoto landscapes all around the park, and today's image is one of the best from the lot.

• 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.

Okay, this will be the last shot of white sand that I post…at least for a little while anyway. This was from sunrise the next morning. Another...

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

White Sands National Monument, New Mexico