Tag: Death Valley

Death Valley

Day 1, Afternoon

This is a beginning of a story about my photographic trip to Death Valley. One of the things that I did differently this time around was writing a journal of some thoughts about scenes I saw and events that happened.

Death Valley is an unique place. It is a place of extreme heat, lack of water and Nature’s way to show adaptation and survival of life. It is a place of extreme contrasts – from heat of the bottom of the valley to cold mountain tops, from dunes at the bottom to forests at the tops.

Every time I go to Death Valley I spent most time in dunes. I’m captivated by their perfect geometry of line, shape and texture. That’s where I stent most of my time on this trip too. But let’s not skip too far ahead and start at the beginning.

Upon arrival to Las Vegas airport I rented a car – a large SUV with foldable second row of seats, so there is a large enough flat area in the back. The reason was that the way I travelled was very minimalistic: I slept in the car. Before going to Death Valley I stopped at the closest grocery store and loaded up the car with water and food for the whole trip.

Once all preparation was done without much delay I took off to Death Valley. After about 3 hour drive I arrived there. The weather was great. The sky was filled with clouds. It was not typical for Death Valley but great for landscape photography.

Road in Death Valley
Road to Eureka Dunes

To Shoot or not to Shoot

Do you prepare for a shot or do you shoot? – Interesting question.

My mantra lately has been “shoot now think later”. Over the years I’ve missed so many moments because I took the time to prepare. But what the preparation is worth if the moment is gone?

So now when I get see something particularly interesting I first shoot – without tripod, with whatever settings happen to be on the camera. Many things I might be able to correct in post-processing. One things that I cannot create in post-processing (at least not yet) is the moment.

After I get those shots in the rapid fire I start setting up tripod and camera, change lenses, put filter, accurately compose and adjust settings on the camera. If the moment is still there I’ll take a picture again and I’ll use it as long as it is better than the one I took a few minutes earlier.

Here is a photo that I shot without tripod with the settings that happened to be on the camera:

Pink World

The lenses happened to be wide open and I had to spend lots of time in post-processing to bring back corners but I got the shot and that’s what’s important for me. In a few seconds the light was gone, dunes got flat and the sky became boring.