We were in the sand dunes before sunrise of the first morning of our March 2021 visit. Hiking in sand requires some effort, but at least during the winter, some of the sand is frozen on the surface, making it a little easier to walk on.
Photographing the dunes in the early morning has the advantage of overnight winds wiping away or muting the footprints of the previous days’ visitors. Still one might have to hunt for places to avoid remaining footprints. Caution is also required in approaching an area to photograph, so one’s own footprints are not ruining the scene.
Those lumpy looking features in the left center of the image above are frozen parts of the sand dunes and make good foreground objects in the vastness of the dunes.
These dunes cover a vast area and we are barely in the edge of the dunes and well below the highest peak.
It was good to have early morning clouds over the mountains to the east of the dunes.
I varied my compositions by moving around slightly or carefully approaching foreground objects, so as not to trample the natural patterns in the sand as the sunrise light progressed over the dunes.
The photo above is nearly the same composition as the first image of this post, but the light has changed with the rising sun and the shadows are longer and more pronounced.
Moving just a few feet can make a dramatic difference in an image in the dunes, as does the changing light conditions.
More from the dunes in the next post,
Ken