There was a brief sleet storm just after I went to bed the second night of our stay near the Great Sand Dunes National Park. It was going to be a very cold night, so I wondered how the sleet and cold would impact our morning photography.
We arose before daybreak to get into the dunes before sunrise. It was 17 degF, the coldest morning we had experienced during this trip.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
The dunes were dusted by the overnight sleet. This added interest to the landscape, but the sleet and cold temperatures preserved footprints from the previous day.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
At least the footprints were somewhat muted, but there seemed no way to avoid getting footprints into photographs. I might have removed these in Lightroom, but I’m sure the results would not have been satisfactory.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
In a valley between dunes, I found interesting patterns, where there either were no footprints or I could easily exclude those from my photos.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
The sleet dusted, frosty sand dunes with snow covered mountains and clouds over them were good for making black and white images.
Snow and Sleet on the Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
This wraps up the highlights of my March 2021 photography in the Great Sand Dunes.
We returned to the dunes in the early evening for sunset photography and I struggled to find satisfying compositions. Maybe we were not in the optimal location for this shoot. There were low clouds on the western horizon, which also blocked the sunset light.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
As we were giving up and beginning to hike back towards the parking lot, there was a sudden and brief break through of light. My son, being much younger and more fit than I, ran to the west to catch the fleeting light, while I walked as fast as I could, hoping to get to a good vantage point before the light was gone.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
I think the image above is the best one the I got during this outing. I was still far from the best vantage point for the best light, but I knew the light was fading fast and I had to stop and shoot now. I got low to catch the dim light in this grassy patch of sand with the fading light on the dune in the background and the interesting clouds over the dune.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
After the light faded from that dune and illuminated the mountainside to the east, I pointed my camera in that direction to get this final shot.
As promised in the last post, I want to elaborate upon the making of this image:
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
More precisely, I want to talk about a few of the many possible compositional variations around this scene.
Firstly, I spotted this feature from a distance and I wanted to be careful in approaching it. If I got too close and then decided to back off, I would already have ruined the scene with my footprints in the sand.
So I began to photograph from a distance and slowly worked my way closer to the “driftwood”. I also had some zoom capability with my 14-24mm wide angle lens.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021. Driftwood 1.Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021. Driftwood 2.Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021. Driftwood 3.
The light changed as I approached and I tried including more sky in my compositions.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021. Driftwood 4.Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021. Driftwood 5Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021. Driftwood 6.
I think I’m much too far away in Driftwood 1. So I worked my way closer.
I think I’m still too far away in Driftwood 3 and it’s a little dark. I like the sky in this image and the lack of features at the interface between the sand and sky, giving this image a clean, simple look. Maybe this makes it more dramatic?
I like the closeness and the angle of view in Driftwood 4, but I cut off a small portion of the driftwood’s shadow in this image. Cutting off shadows is something that I try to avoid, whenever possible. So I zoomed out a little and made Driftwood 5. Zooming out here got more sky in the image, which I like.
I got much closer for Driftwood 6, but I do not think this is an optimal angle of view.
I lean towards Driftwood 2 and 5 as my favorites. I’m not sure which is best, but I lean towards 5. I think that I could have made a better image than either of these two. Maybe it is good to never be quite satisfied with our photographs, so that we continue to strive to get better images.
As always, readers’ opinions and critiques are welcome,
I continued to wander around in the Great Sand Dunes early the first morning of our March 2021 visit, looking for good compositions.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
The icy rim along the ridge in this dune caught my eye. I like the way that icy ridge leads the eye from the left corner of the frame to the long ridge, which in turn leads the eye into the upper part of the image.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
I’m always looking for objects with distinct shadows and these chunks of frozen sand, that lie along the edge of a dune, add interest to this image. The edge of the dune acts as a leading line from the lower right towards the upper left. This line is more brightly lighted than other portions of the image and acts as a diagonal dividing line in the image. Notice how the sand details, visible texture and light change as the eye crosses this diagonal. The darkness in the clouds and the shadowy, distant mountains create a strong contrast with the sunlit sand.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
A series of circular features breaking the ripple patterns in the sand made me stop to take this photo. I’ve converted the original color image to monochrome, since I think this image with these features is more dramatic in black and white.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
This small piece of “driftwood” breaks up and modifies the wind created ripples in a dune. I put quotes on “driftwood”, since I’m not sure that this is the proper term for how this chunk of a tree got here. Maybe it blew in via wind or maybe it was washed here by water?
I’ll have more to say about making this image in a subsequent post.
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.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
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.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
These dunes cover a vast area and we are barely in the edge of the dunes and well below the highest peak.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
It was good to have early morning clouds over the mountains to the east of the dunes.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
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.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
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.
Great Sand Dunes, Colorado, March 2021
Moving just a few feet can make a dramatic difference in an image in the dunes, as does the changing light conditions.
Sand dunes provide great opportunities for abstract photography. I hope that the few such photographs shared in this post will illustrate such possibilities.
This image is created via focus stacking 4 images in Adobe Photoshop, with edits in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm, f/11, 1/50s, ISO 64.
Wind creates large expanses of ripples and repeating patterns in sand dunes, such as those shown above. These can be rendered effectively in color, if the light is favorable. I like monochrome for such photos, since one only needs the light to provide shadows and highlights, meaning one can shoot at times other than just the “golden” hours.
By excluding moving objects, one can use focus stacking quite effectively in such images, getting sharp images over a large depth range.
Sandhills Abstract. Nikon d850, Nikon 24-70mm at 55mm, f/11, 1/50s, ISO 200. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
I really like this photo with the diagonal ripples superimposed on the orthogonal wave in the dune. Obviously, the shadows in the troughs, alternating with the highlights on the crests of the ripples, produces these interesting features.
A composite of three images focus stacked in Adobe Photoshop with edits in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 46mm, f/11, 1/40s, ISO 200.
This is another of my favorite abstracts from the sandhills. In this case, I like the highlight in the depression near the top right of the image and the way the ripples flow into and around the depression.
A composite of three images, focus stacked in Adobe Photoshop, with edits in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 40mm, f/11, 1/60s, ISO 200.
Another image with interesting, bifurcating, ripple patterns with faint wisps of plant matter (look closely to see these) across the ripples.
This is a composite of 6 images focus stacked in Adobe Photoshop with edits in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 48mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 200.
The animal track across these subdued ripples adds interest to the pattern. The original color version also shows variations in the color of the sand, producing streaks of color crossing the ripples.
Natural artwork in the sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm (before crop), f/11, 1/15s, ISO 200. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
I’m sure some of you have seen images of circles swept into sand by plant fronds or limbs. Here is a variation on that with the lower frond producing long streaks across the sand ripples and the upper frond pecking out an intricate, dimpled pattern along the direction of the sand ripples. To me such natural art work is fascinating. These are also short lived, since the next wind will probably erase these or maybe produce a variation. So, if you see an interesting one, photograph it before it is gone!
Here are a few more early morning and late day photos from this park.
Animal tracks and corrugated shadows in sand dune. This is an Adobe Photoshop focus stack of three images, edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 50mm, f/11, 1/40s, ISO 64.
In this early morning scene, I like the curved shadow cast by this twig and the way the sand ripples give it a corrugated look. The animal tracks passing by also adds some interest.
Muted footprints, sand ripples and sunset shadows. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 100. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
Late days in the park were always cloudy, during my visit, which muted the sunset light, but at least added some interest to the sky. In the above photo one can see the evidence of human activity in footprints in the dunes. Those on the left side were softened by the wind, while those in the distance are more recent. I rather liked this wide open view with the late day shadows encroaching from the left. There are also a number of people and some human infrastructure in this photo, but these are only visible, when the image is enlarged.
A small bush cast long shadows at sunset in Monahans Sandhills SP, Texas. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/100s, ISO 100. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
While being a bit subtle, this little distorted bush and its long shadow caught my eye as I wondered around the sandhills just before sunset.
Sunset light on sand dunes in Monahans Sandhills SP, Texas. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 14mm, f/11, 1/160s, ISO 100. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
The light on this dune went from none to fairly good as I composed this image. I was able to exclude most of the human disturbance within the nearby sand, but one can still see the muted footprints in the right side portion of this image. I like the soft, swirly look in the blue sky above the dunes here.
Late day shadows in Monahans Sandhills SP, Texas. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
A trio of almost buried desert plants with their long, late day shadows, below the softly, windblown clouds in the blue sky makes this one of my favorite images here.
A small tree casting long shadows at sunset in Monahans Sandhills SP, Texas. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, 1/125s, f/11, ISO 200. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
Another small, subtle bush casting a long shadow in the late day sunlight.
Sunset light illuminating the sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 200. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
The remnants of a windblown bush, highlighted by late day sunlight, and the disturbance it caused in the sand ripples caught my eye here.
A cropped portion of a previous photo. The tumble weed creates interesting perturbations in the windblown sand ripples.
Thinking that the most interesting portion of the previous photo is that little broken bush, with the sand ripple perturbations it caused and the highlights on those and the bush, I cropped out this portion of that image. The larger image offers context to the photo, but I think the cropped portion is more interesting and offers a bit of mystery. What do you think?
Park visitors walking the crest of a dune, below wispy clouds. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 22mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO100. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software
The sky here is the most interesting portion of this photo, but the three people along the sand dune ridge add a bit of scale to the image.
Sunset light illuminates the sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 320. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
I spotted this fallen tree with the last rays of the day highlighting it and I knew I had to capture it. I made this shot, fearing that I was going to lose the light at any time, then I moved in closer, hoping to get another composition before the light went away.
Sunset light illuminating a fallen tree and the sand dunes. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/125s, ISO 800. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
The clouds made the light intermittent, but I managed to get this shot before it was entirely gone from the fallen tree.
Sunset at the end of day 2 in the sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 24mm, f/11, 1.0s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
This is my final sunset shot before calling it a day in the dunes. I had planned to come back out the next morning for one final shoot, prior to heading to my next destination, but the extensive human disturbance of the sand over the weekend, made me think that I had captured all the best for this trip, so I decided to sleep in the next morning and get an earlier start on the road.
I have a few abstract images from the dunes that I will share in the final post for this park before continuing to my next destination.
Before I continue with photography within this park, I will offer a brief review of the park and facilities. There was some work being done at the visitor center at the entrance, when I was there. This required one to go into the center to confirm one’s arrival and pay any fees that were due, rather than pay in the typical way at a reception window. However, I was a bit confused by the signage at the entrance, thinking that I needed to drive on into the park to find the place to check in. So I continued, following the signs to the camping area. Upon getting to the RV area, I found a ranger helping another RVer with a big rig get into his assigned spot. He came over to chat with me for awhile and told me how to best get to my reserved spot and told me I had a good spot adjacent to a sand dune on one side. He also told me that he could come by, when he made his early morning rounds, and take me back to the visitor center to check in. I informed him that I would probably be in the dunes in the early morning hours and late day hours. I did not tell him why and he did not ask, but he looked a bit confused, since apparently few visitors get out that early into the dunes. Anyway, even though I saw him passing by my place during my subsequent stay, he never stopped by and I never got any note on my vehicle, even though I did not have the typical sticker or receipt that the parks require on vehicles within the park. I did stop by the visitor center as I was leaving the park to be sure all was ok and I was informed that all my fees were paid by the online reservation and I was all set to go. I knew that I had paid the campsite fee, but I still thought that I had to pay the entrance fee, since my annual membership card was expired.
This is an old park and the facilities need some refurbishing, especially the restrooms and showers. The showers are open with no privacy doors. The shower water valves do not operate the way I expected and I initially thought there was no hot water. This is a sandy place and visitors using the showers naturally leave much sand in the shower area.
The park is just north of I-20 and a railway that parallels I-20. Being in the heart of the Permian Basin, there is much oil field truck traffic on I-20 and there were numerous trains passing by through out the night, so it can be rather noisy at night. I must admit that the train whistle sound during the night was a bit nostalgic, since I recall hearing these during the night in my childhood home.
The days were mostly pleasantly cool during my visit, but the late night and early mornings were cold. Even with chemical hand warmers in my fleece mittens, that opened to fingerless mode so that I could operate the camera controls, my finger tips got numb, especially just before sunrise, when I need them to not be so numb.
This is an Adobe Photoshop focus stack of 5 images, edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 31mm, f/11, 1/30s, ISO 64.
Apparently, there is much night life activity in the sand dunes, too. The evidence of such is reflected by the many animal tracks in the sand, especially in the early morning hours before people walk through the dunes, disturbing the surface.
This image is created via focus stacking 5 images in Adobe Photoshop with edits in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 48mm, f/11, 1.6s – 2.0s, ISO 64.An early morning photo of multiple animal tracks across sand dune ripples. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 42mm, ISO 64, f/11, 1/30s. Two images focus stacked in Adobe Photoshop, edited in Lightroom and DXO Nik software.This is a composite of 5 images, edited in Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 29mm, f/11, 1/40s, ISO 64.
In the late day excursions into the sandhills, I could hear coyotes yelping and they did not seem very far away. I saw numerous coyote tracks in the dunes, so I’m sure they were hunting prey in the night time hours within the dunes.
You might note that all of the images above are created by focus stacking a number of images in Photoshop. I like doing this to get sharpness through out an image, but there can be problems with doing this. In particular, if there is motion, such as movement of vegetation or clouds, while taking a series of shots, the focus stacking might not work out well. Since I knew I had this taking place in many of my shots, I inspected the results of each focus stacked image. If there were movement effects noted, I would either abandon the focus stack method or try again with different photos. If the movement effects were far in the background, where the image is not extremely sharp, anyway, I might ignore that and keep the resultant image. This is ok as long as the image is not enlarged to such an extent that the movement or misalignment is apparent. This is just a judgement call one has to make for such shots. I’ve also noted that Photoshop sometimes selects the portions of images that it uses in the focus stack in what appears to be a non logical way, with blobs of images included within an area where most of a separate image is selected. I’m sure that this is just a limitation of the software’s ability to distinguish sharpness for some portions of an image. This might be corrected by manually stacking the images, but that gets into a lot more work in the editing process.
In a couple of my initial focus stacked images, I noted glaring misalignments that could not be attributed to motion. Upon inspecting the original images, I noted that even though I typically sync adjustments across the images to be used in the focus stack process, the lens profile correction did not get applied to all images. This might have been my error, not the software’s problem. Upon correcting this, the focus stack misalignment issue went away. So just something else to be aware of when using this technique.
Early morning in Monahans Sandhills SP. This is a composite of 5 photos, edited in Adobe LR, Photoshop and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/60s, ISO 64.Coyote footprints in Monahans Sandhills SP, Texas. Nikon D850, Nikon 14-24mm at 22mm, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 64. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
Readers might note that this is a great place to use the “leading lines” technique in photography. There are very evident lines of multiple kinds in most of these photographs that serve to lead the eye through the photos.
Early morning light and shadows in the sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/10s, ISO 64.
I like the long shadows streaking through the late day sunlit highlights on the dunes and the numerous animal tracks in the sands in this shot.
Early Morning in Monahans Sandhills SP, Texas. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 24mm, f/11, 1/13s, ISO 64.
In the photo above, I am not pleased with he sky. Note that it is very blue on the right and much too bright on the left. I first considered cropping to remove the sky, but I did not think I could get a pleasing crop. Subsequently, I considered deleting this photo due to its obvious defect, but then I thought that this can be an example from which to learn. The dark blue is probably due to the effect of the polarizing filter in a wide angle shot. I usually try to minimize this effect, but I apparently neglected to do so in this shot. I do not specifically remember using a graduated neutral density filter in this shot, but I think it most probable that I did. I tried to edit the sky color to even it out a bit, but I did not like the results, so I just left it as it was. Someone with great patience and skill in Photoshop could probably fix the sky, but I’m not so inclined.
I still have a few images from this park to share, so it looks like I will need to continue this in a separate post or two.
I finally got time to get away for a couple of weeks in March. My destinations were largely determined by weather patterns and the distance between those possible destinations. The first stop was Monahans Sandhills State Park between Odessa and Monahans, Texas. This is a place that I first visited briefly in the 1980s, while on a business trip in the area.
I arrive at the Sandhills about mid-afternoon on a Saturday, where I had reservations in the RV camping area for two nights. My campsite turned out to be in an advantageous site, adjacent to a dune that helped block the prevailing winds. It had been very windy here just a few days prior, which is good, since the wind erases the surface disturbances created by visitors to the dunes. However, I was there during a weekend, so I expected to have to work around the weekend visitors and their tracks in the sand dunes.
The park was fairly busy, as I expected, but the nightly winds helped mute the daily human disturbance of the sand dune surfaces. Initially, I was not impressed by the photographic possibilities in the dunes and many of my photos lived up to those low expectations. However, in the end I think I managed to get a few descent photos. I will let the readers judge the results for themselves and maybe provide some feedback on the posted photos.
Sunset light and shadows in the sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 32mm, f/11, 1/200s, ISO 200. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.Sunset light in the sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 29mm, f/11, 1/250s, ISO 200. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
It was rather cloudy, especially the first day at sunset, so the late day light was intermittent and not as good as one would have liked for landscape photography. The clouds added drama to the sky, but I never got the brilliantly lit or colorful clouds that I had looked forward to.
Late day in the Sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 26mm, f/11, 1/250s, ISO 400. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
It was a bit of a challenge to find large areas of undisturbed sand, but as you can see in the above photo, I managed to find a few such areas. Although, there are muted footprints in the sand in the upper left side of the photo. In the previous photo, there are muted footprints evident in the right portion of the photo. I do not think these are so strongly apparent as to distract from the natural appearance of the sand.
A composite of three images, edited in Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and DXO Nik software. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm at 70mm (before crop), f/11, 1/60s, ISO 200.
The two trees in this photo are weather beaten and scraggly, but I like the glow in the sand at their base and the alternating dark to light in the sand ripples leading from the base of the photo to the trees. This originally started out as a wider landscape view, but there were distracting elements on the right hand side, so I cropped the photo to remove the distraction.
Sunset in the Sandhills. Nikon D850, Nikon 24-70mm, at 36mm, f/11, 1/30s, ISO 640. Edited in Adobe Lightroom and DXO Nik software.
This sunset photo was taken at the end of my first day in the sandhills. There are notable human infrastructure item along the horizon, some of which I removed or muted via editing, but I could never get all of those features removed without leaving unattractive artifacts, so I left most of them in the photo. These are only visible and distracting, when one enlarges the photo.
This is enough for this post. I will continue with more photos from the sandhills in the next post.
