A photo safari to White Sands National Park
Last week I spent a few days at White Sands National Park (WSNP from here on out) to see and experience the place for the first time and to make some photos. I had read several blog posts about how to photograph the dunes —- what lens to carry, what time of year and day to go, how to keep sand out of your gear, where in the park to find great dunes, what settings to use, etc. I felt prepared for my Labor Day journey, but there are some things I just had to experience. I arrived around 2:00PM on a Sunday, and my weather app told me the temperature was a mild 85 degrees and sunny. I’ve gotten used to the Phoenix heat (We’ve had over 100 consecutive days of 100 or more degrees, which for you math majors adds up to over 10,000 degrees.) I had a hat, SPF 50 clothing, sunscreen, and plenty of water, so I started walking the Alkali Flats Trail. For the first couple hundred yards or so it was smooth sailing, but then steep dunes intruded and I began to feel the heat, on my head and shoulders, but also radiating up from the reflective sand. Now, I’ve never actually been inside a convection oven, but that must be what it feels like. And it was so bright that I had a tough time seeing clearly enough through the viewfinder to know if my photos were any good. They weren’t, as seen here:
On top of that, I knew that the conditions were doing my body no good, so I walked back to the car and drove to my hotel in Alamagordo (“fat cottonwood”) to cool off and return around sunset, and that made all the difference. The sun began to set, a breeze kicked up, and the temp dropped into the low 70s. I walked about two and a half miles on the trail this time and hung around long enough for the sun to set. I had decided not to waste time looking for the “perfect” dune I’d read about, the one untouched by human feet and uninterrupted by plant life. Nature’s not perfect, after all, but at WSNP it’s damn fine.
I returned to my hotel, ate a terrible meal, and slept until 8:00AM. The next day called for sunny skies, so I drove up to Mescalero to see the restored church of St. Joseph Apache. After a quick visit I headed back, with a stop in Tularosa (“rose-colored reeds”). But surprisingly the skies had darkened over the basin, and so I sped out to the dunes in hopes of catching a desert storm. I got lucky.
This is my favorite image from my trip. The storm has darkened the horizon and rain begins to obscure the silhouette of the San Andres Mountains. The sand —- smooth and white —- offers a stark contrast to the unsettled sky. The scrub plants break up the monotony of the sand, and the clouds roil up and out towards me. I was awestruck, small in the white expanse, exposed to the gathering storm. They say in a black and white photo the tones from black to white and all the grays in between (50 at least) create interest, and I think that’s happening here. Better yet, the photo shows how I felt about the place at that moment.
This trip marked the first real test of how I’d do with my new camera, a Leica Q2. I’d traded my old cameras and lenses to buy it with the idea that I wanted to simplify my photography, I wanted a compact camera for travel and hiking, and I wanted to work with a fixed lens (not a zoom). This camera fit the bill. As far as using the camera, I now fully realize what “zoom with your feet” entails. The 28mm lens is a real beauty, but it means moving your body to get a great angle or the perfect proximity. No more standing back with a 200mm lens and firing away. The sand is packed tight in the basins and along the crest of the dunes, but walking up and down the dunes is a slog. I spent a lot of time trekking to get what I wanted, and while it was worth every step, my calves may never be the same.
In “Auguries of Innocence” William Blake invites us “To see a World in a Grain of Sand.” If that’s possible, then infinite worlds await us at WSNP.