The last post was about finally finding the full-sized images from a Death Valley National Park trip just after one of my throat operations and me not being able to talk to anyone for five days. The pictures were put through Lightroom and then exported at 600dpi across the longest edge for some reason. The originals disappeared into the hard drives not to be seen again until last week. Discovering them was like coming home from the trip all over again. What joy!

The east wind was howling on one of the evenings I spent in the Mesquite Sand Dunes. I remember parking the Tacoma on the and hiking way out across the flat ground and into the dunes in the afternoon. The wind blew with such vigor I could jump up and be blown a couple inches downwind. As a result I tried to only shoot pictures with the Nikon 85mm f1.4 lens I used for wedding photography at the time. I always loved that lens. It made razor sharp images but weighed the pack down a little.

So I hiked around the dunes looking for the classic lines, shadows, and shapes they make but the wind made sand flags off the tops of the dunes. To me they looked really cool. While shooting them I kept getting closer to the sand blowing off the dunes.

Photographer John Shaw always said to shoot what interests you and fill the frame with the interesting subject. In one of his books he used the example of a forest filled with trees, ferns, bushes, whatever and said if you love the look of the ferns, why shoot the entire scene? Just focus on the ferns and make them the subject. If using a longer lens get the leaves. If going wider to show the ferns in context with the forest then get down close to a fern and make it the biggest, most important part of the picture. Visualizing this before you set up the camera and start doing pictures really comes into play here.

While thinking of John Shaw, I started getting closer to the sand blowing across a dune and out into space. That’s what was interesting to me and so I asked the question of what it might look like as a picture. There’s no way you can visualize what a picture of this might look like ahead of time. Will it look like sand blowing off the dune in a picture? The camera seeing things differently than we do because our brains can interpret the scene while a camera just records it exactly the way you tell it to record.

The first problem to solve was getting a dune with a lot of sand blowing off the edge. The second problem was to have just enough light cutting across the dune to just light the tops of the riffles in the sand and almost back light the blowing sand. Finally I wanted the shadow of another dune in behind to really make the blowing sand pop.

Three random requirements I visualized as being necessary for a successful picture. It took awhile of walking around in the blowing sand to see a place where the three elements fit together for a potential picture. Of course a person actually needs to take the picture to see if the idea might work. The LCD screen on the back of the digital cameras really make this easy. A person doesn’t need to do a pile of pictures on expensive Fuji Velvia, drive home, take the film to The New Lab and then look at a few on one of the light tables they had in the lab to see if any turned out. If I remember correctly, the combined cost of a 36 frame roll of film and processing in The New Lab was about $13. I used to have to budget how much film per month I could shoot. The new 40+ megapixel sensors on the cameras eliminate that cost. I’m so, so happy about the change now.

Anyhoo, I was shooting, checking what the initial look of the pictures, and then moved on to the next idea. This is one of those pictures I love, but others might not. Why? One thing for me is what it took to make it happen. The elements I searched for coming together in a picture. To me it’s cool because of the light, the sand blowing off the edge, the light hitting the tops of the riffles, and the streaks of sand blowing across the tops of the riffles. Plus the light has that nice warm late afternoon quality. It’s a moment in time.

Some people won’t like this picture. Perhaps too difficult to understand. Too close. Too abstract. Too basic. Everyone gets their own opinion. Maybe I like it only because I know what it’s about and the effort and creative output required to make it happen. It may end up on my wall as a metal print someday.