Photographing Sand Dunes

I thought I might bring up some of my experiences shooting the sand dunes in Death Valley National Park. I am by no means an expert (I have only shot two dunes) but I have a couple of tips that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere.

You can make out the Panamint Dunes in the middle of the frame, left of the butte.

There are five main sand dunes in Death Valley; Eureka Dunes, Mesquite Dunes, Ibex Dunes, Panamint Dunes and Hidden Dunes. Eureka is the highest, Mesquite the busiest and the others rarely visited. I don’t really think Panamint or Ibex are all that difficult to get to but they don't get a lot of foot traffic, so if you want to go to a pristine dune field those are you're best bets.

For better or worse, I think Mesquite is the most photogenic, due to the more golden color and the longer length they cover, giving the impression they go on forever. Mesquite has one big drawback and that’s the footprints. The tallest parts will always have footprints, as everyone wants to get to the top. The areas that require at least a 1-2 mile hike from the parking lot though should have few to no footprints.

As with all landscape photography, but especially dune photography, you’re going to have to get to the dunes at the very least one hour before sunrise/sunset. I think there are three distinctive periods during sunset/sunrise to shot. I’ll use sunrise as an example; pre-sunrise glow (civil twilight), sun at the horizon (dawn) and finally golden hour.

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes - You can see the amount of footprints on the highest dune and of course there will probably be photographers there at nearly all hours. I wanted the two you see above in the frame and had to race to get to the back of them and high enough to get them and the pre-sunrise glow all in one shot.

In the pre-sunrise glow period you generally either want to be high up so you can get the most of the glow, which emanates from the horizon line, or far back from the dunes taking a wider shot.

You’ll generally be looking at strong silhouettes being cast due to the large dynamitic range, so make sure you bracket, even if you have a D810/A7R. It is worth mentioning that if you do climb up high on the dunes at this time, you’ll leave footprints for any pictures after sunrise (this doesn't have to be a bad thing as you can use them to create leading lines).

 

 

 

 

Eureka Dunes, about twenty minutes after sunrise.

Next, you have the sunrise, with the sun actually at the horizon and visible. Rather than looking for side-lighting shadows here I would recommend using the sun in the composition. Sun-stars are the obvious choice but there’s also using the dunes to create leading lines towards the sun. Again, the dynamic range here is going to be a lot (even more than civil twilight).

If you haven’t started climbing the sand dunes yet, you’re in luck as the path leading up to the peaks of the sand dunes are perfect spots for sun stars. Make sure you get low if you’re close to the peak and be ready to focus stack if you get really low.

 

Finally, there’s golden hour. Really you have more like an hour and half after sunrise to look for shadow interplay in the dunes. The sun should be low, so you should be able to find areas that have both strong shadows and fully illuminated parts.

Mesquite Dunes, with some shadow inter-play and some nice, light cloud cover giving a softly lit sun.

Eureka Dunes, well after sunrise. Standing about half way up the highest ridge, looking down on some of the smaller dunes further to the south.

While a lot of people will tell you that photographing sand dunes is difficult, I would disagree. You have to move around a lot and think about your next shot while say you’re camera is firing off bracketed shots, but you’re come away with a lot of good pictures, rather than just the usual one or two. Make sure you plan ahead; check for cloud cover, how high the clouds are likely to be, the wind speed and of course the direction the sun will set or rise. Oh yeah, one more thing, make sure have some fun, if photographing this way isn’t you’re idea of fun do whatever gives you a blast!

 

Cocoa Beach Sunrise

Staying in Orlando, I couldn't pass up the opportunity at shooting a beach with a pier, which I missed out on when I went to Miami. The two big beaches near Orlando are Cocoa Beach and Daytona Beach. I chose Cocoa Beach, hoping it would be less busy, though I did have to go on the toll frenzied Highway 528.

I went for a shot with the pier cutting across the frame and into the sunrise, rather than one down the pier or one with sunrise coming through the pier piling. There were a lot of people taking pictures around the pier, where I think they were hoping for a sun-star from one of the pier pilings, that never materialized. 

I got a little lucky that there was any color at sunrise at all. The weather reports were mixed for the morning, with showers in the afternoon. With the rain coming, I got some nice dramatic clouds and the bonus pre-sunrise glow, though no actual sun.

I tried a couple of longer exposures; trying to get a shot with a lot more motion in the clouds. Unfortunately not having a 10 stop nd-filter (I tired taking numerous 30 second exposure, hoping to stack them in Photoshop) and with the clouds moving left to right rather than forwards and backwards, the picture turned out so-so.

The above is one 30 second exposure. I tried stacking a couple of 30 second ones in Photoshop but it turned out not looking so good, guess I can't get around buying a 10 stop ND filter.

The Milky Way At Blood Mountain, GA


Recently I headed off to Blood Mountain, up in the Georgia Mountains. I wanted to get my second dip in the water with astrophotography and in particular photographing the Milky Way (my first attempt, at possibly the best place to take it in the northern hemisphere).

First, I'll walk you through the research before I headed out. As anyone with any experience with astrophotography will tell you; you need dark skies. I headed over to lightpollutionmap.info to check how much light pollution there is in the Chattahoochee National Forest. Turns out there's still a couple of good dark locations in Georgia! The thing to look for in this map is not only the light pollution in the area you are thinking of going to but also the light pollution in the direction you're camera's going to be pointing, unless of course you're going to point it straight up.

Light pollution map showing Blood Mountain and the light polluted towns of Dahlonega and Cleveland towards the south.

Light pollution map showing Blood Mountain and the light polluted towns of Dahlonega and Cleveland towards the south.

To get the galactic core of the Milky Way in the frame you're more than likely going to be pointing the lens towards the south. As you can see, Blood Mountain has the heavily light polluted towns of Dahlonega and Cleveland towards the south. They seemed reasonably far away from Blood Mountain though so I thought it was still worth the trip.

Next, I checked for clear skies - don't want those pesky clouds blocking the stars. I used the Climendo app/website (pro version has hourly reports) as it aggregates several weather forecasts. I kind of risked it as clear skies weren't certain.

There are couple of other things you may want to do, like checking for the composition of the Milky Way with the surrounding landscape using PhotoPills or Stellarium, and of course make sure it's between April and October so the galactic core of the Milky Way would be visible after astronomical twilight.

 

And now for the results:

In the first shot (the one to the left), you can see the town of Cleveland (might be Dahlonega) giving off a lot of light pollution. There's also plenty of cloud cover covering it up, which is softening up the light glow pretty nicely.

I waited a bit and moved to the left and got a straight up and down shot of the galactic core. The cloud cover by then had passed and revealed the light pollution glow in it's full glory.

Panorama of three fisheye shots, from a rock sledge on top of Blood Mountain.

Single shot using the Sigma 15mm f/2.8 ex dg.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the visibility of the Milky Way in the photographs but I think I spent too much time focusing on the stars rather than on the foreground and I've ended up with some noisy, dark foreground subjects. Third time should be the charm and next on the list is going to be Brasstown Bald, a little further north from Blood Mountain.

Check out my blog post about the Milky Way over Jekyll Island, GA.