Chasing Wind & Light – The Art of Dune Photography

How's it going everyone? Michael Shamblin here and welcome back to Death Valley National Park. And right now I'm just walking to the dunes and it is a very special day for the dunes because it is super windy. Check this out. Look at all that wind blowing out in the distance creating beautiful atmosphere, swirling clouds above the dunes. I have a feeling this is going to be one of the most dramatic days on the dunes yet. I mean this right now is about a sustained 25 mile per hour wind and they're looking at about 35 mile per hour gusts. So I'm going to be eating a lot of sand and well taking a lot of pictures of it. I don't know if you guys can tell from the footage but this is intense right now. So much sand blowing everywhere, crunching on it. It's incredible though. Wow. Insane. Alright you guys, so I think I found a spot where I can show you a really cool perspective. So check that out. That's about 100 millimeters. Look there's a person out there too for scale. We can zoom on in here. If I don't hold on to this tripod and camera it's going to fall right over. It's pretty windy right now. Just look at this. Look at those beautiful triangular shapes out in the distance. All the sand blowing. It's really intense. Looks like we're in a, I mean we pretty much are in a sandstorm. So you can get that beautiful atmosphere that makes it look like another planet almost. It looks so otherworldly comparatively to when you don't have any of the dust blowing in the sky. It's really nice to be able to, oh my gosh, it's really nice to be able to obscure that background. But what's also really cool is even facing in this direction I love the side lighting here with some of these dunes. I like how you have the repetition of shape here. Naturally, I've just been bumping my ISO a bit trying to get a really high shutter speed because there is no way, no way I'm doing a long exposure in this at all. So I've been going with f16, ISO 500, and then about a thousandth of a second for these. So here's that first photograph with those really cool rolling dune shapes. I loved that soft side light and the color contrast between the bluish tones in the mountain in the background and the warmer tones in the dunes. Right before photographing this one, I did find a tight shot of some simple dune patterns that I had to focus stack. And here's how that one turned out. So this was a tricky photograph to take because I basically had to focus on that front dune, the middle dune, and then the background dune in three separate exposures. Now, as mentioned before, that camera was shaking around a ton because of the wind. So Photoshop wouldn't stitch it automatically. That meant I had to go in and manually align all the frames and then mask out each section based on focus. Oh, you know what? Look at this. So you've got the beautiful points out there, but then if I zoom out, look at that really interesting shape in the foreground with the sand blowing. I think that could be cool to incorporate into the composition. And if I move around, I can shift where that foreground dune is. So I'm going to try this composition for sure. Absolutely beautiful. One of my favorite things about exploring the dunes is not just when you get to the top of the dune to focus on a vantage point, but also to get a bit lower into the valleys to create more layering. And sure enough, on my walk in between two dunes, I found a really cool composition and here's how it turned out. All right, well, after battling some pretty intense wind and sand, I found a spot that's at least moderately chill. Still got sand blowing, but moderate enough to where I can put down the tripod and it's not going to fall over. I've just been snapping so many photographs so far. This has been insane, really insane. Let me show you what the perspective looks like from right here. All right, so you can see from this perspective, I've got these beautiful pointy dunes in the distance and I can even include some of the foreground hill right there, which is catching a lot of that sand. I can also point over here, some really interesting patterns. Of course, as usual, if we zoom in, we can start to isolate some of these shapes and create different compositions. But look at the sand just dusting off the top of all these little peaks and ridges. Let's look at this one right here. This one's really cool. I love how pointy this is and how kind of even and flowy the foreground is with all those horizontal shapes, some of the diagonal lines, light dusting off the top, background is completely obscured. There's something so magical about sunlight reflecting off these dunes, creating such beautiful glow. And I truly believe you can shoot these dunes under any conditions, but I got to say having that beautiful dusting of sand off in the distance to create the atmosphere and the motion of the sand rushing across each and every ridge really made this one special. I probably walked now about a good three miles around these dunes just searching, you know, up and down and up and down looking for different compositions. And I say it all the time, but that is the best way to get good dune photography is to just walk around. I mean, really, that's the key. You're not going to get very many perspectives or variations if you're just standing in one spot. So, you know, I packed water, I packed extra water, extra snacks, and I was prepared to be out here for a long time. Luckily, we still have a lot of light to work with here, so I'm still able to do a high f-stop here, and that's going to allow most of the shot to be in focus. Now, if I do include some of these ridges in the foreground, I will have to do a couple of exposures to focus stack. Whether those are going to work or not is another story, we'll have to find out. And in general, when I'm shooting this style of photography, my rule of thumb is to try and expose as far to the right as I can on the histogram without blowing out the highlight detail. And especially in a situation like this where we've got direct light, it's really contrasty, I really want to protect all of those highlights. Let's, I think I'm going to move forward and see if we can get more of these pointy dunes that I've been focusing on, but get them a little bit closer to camera. So we'll give it a shot. As I was photographing the sun right before it dipped behind this cloud, I looked to the right side and noticed something incredible. Watching this bird soar across the dunes was absolutely majestic, and I frantically aimed my telephoto lens in this direction, snapping a ton of photos, hoping that one of them would be in focus, or at least the composition would be good enough to share here. And luckily these soft rolling dunes worked perfectly with the lighting. Now, this isn't the first time I've seen a bird on the dunes, but it's definitely rare. If you remember one of my previous vlogs, I actually shot a bird into the sunset. And even though that image was a lot more dramatic than these ones, what I really appreciated about this series of photos is the minimalism and simplicity here. After this, I decided to try something a little bit more abstract with the low light. So this photograph was a lot of fun to take, and I decided to remove the sky here and just focus on the highlights and shadows. I thought that all those strong diagonal lines worked really well here, and having one thicker triangular-shaped dune kind of towards the top with some dusting of sand I felt like was a really nice focal point. And here's something completely different, focusing a bit more off to the side so you get more of that soft side lighting of sunset, and again having the color contrast of the warmth in the highlights and some of those cooler shadows. All right, well as you can see the sun has gone behind some clouds. It's probably going to go beyond the mountain pretty soon here, and that means we have no more direct light. It's just soft diffused light. And normally I'd be trying to shoot a lot of reflected light shots pretty soon here, but the one worry is with all this wind, it's going to be a little challenging to do long exposures. So what we need to do is find an area around here where there's a pocket without wind, and then maybe we can, you know, pull off a couple long exposures with reflected light. But I'm definitely going to give it a go. I'm just not entirely sure if we'll find the right spot. Luckily though, as of a couple minutes ago, the wind has really died down. You can see I can, you know, stand and I don't have like a bunch of sand blowing in my face right now. It's actually pretty mild. So yeah, maybe this will be good. Maybe the wind dies down just enough to allow us to do a bunch of really cool post-sunset shots. We'll have to see. So as sunset finally hit, the dunes became more diffused, but as I turned around I noticed the light cascading up the higher mountain ridge. And so I found just one more composition to try. So as you can see here, the wind really subsided and that background became a lot more clear after the dust settled. This photograph almost looks like it was taken on a completely different day out there on the dunes, but I thought this one was a really nice way to cap off an incredible evening. It's crazy how many times I've visited these dunes over the last 12 years, and every single time I go back, I always find something unique, something different that I hadn't seen in my previous trips. And I think that's the thing that keeps bringing me back here. It's such a special place to photograph, but I think that could be said about a lot of different places. Whether it's the coast, the dunes, the woodlands, it's all about putting in the effort and a bit of creativity. So regardless of where you're photographing next, whether it's a new place you've never seen before, or it's one of your favorite local spots, just get out there, have fun, and explore your imagination. All right, well it's getting pretty dark, and I think it's about time to start wrapping this up. Amazing day though, seriously. Very intense. I'm super excited to see how these images turned out. But as always, I really appreciate you watching this video, and if you did enjoy it, please give it a thumbs up, and consider subscribing to the channel for more. And if you want to learn more from me, you can check out my workshop page. I'm going to leave a link in the description. I have group workshops here in Death Valley, on the Oregon coast, in Ireland, and I have a few new ones coming out soon, so make sure to check those out. And yeah, thank you so much for watching, and I'll catch you in the next one.