This post wraps up my evenings at White Sands National Park, at least for this visit. One thing you can’t help but notice is the lack of foliage. I already live in a place with a severe lack of foliage but the white sand makes this place more fun to photograph. As it turns out, there is some life out in the dunes but not much. I would love to return especially at the end of the summer during storm season – could be very fun. These are some of my favorites from the trip and there are 7 of them!
This little yucca is trying to poke itself out of the sand. The more I look at this photo the more I like it. Gentle ripples in the sand with the sharp yucca is quite nice. It’s like this yucca made it out of the pit of jumble below and gets to watch the sky change color over the dunes in the distance. I’m quite happy with this one – my only complaint is that shot this handheld. A tripod would’ve allowed me a bit more dynamic range via dropping the ISO.
This one has a tropical sort of feel to it. I like the ripples in the sand and the bright blue sky. At this point in the evening (these photos are not necessarily chronological), the light was still pretty harsh. Still it shows how few trees and foliage exist at this place.
My last post showed a similar photo but in this one I managed to get the butterfly with her wings open. Again, there’s not much to look at in the background but this photo feels like it works better in the ‘minimalism’ way of things. I wish the lines in the sand were a bit more defined and straight as I had seen in other areas but I like that there is some texture back there.
Now here’s some texture! This dune looked as though God took a football field-sized rake and just drug it down the dune. A very interesting sight to see. I decided to put the yuccas in the scene here also. I like that they’re growing out of the dune at a bit of an angle.
I had this tree (or pile of sticks) in my last post. This photo seems to work better for me, though I’m not sure why that is. I like that we can still see the light hitting the dune in the distance and I like that the shadows of these tree branches are coming toward the camera. I don’t love the colors but I didn’t want to take this to black and white so I left it feeling a bit washed out.
We found a spot to sit and enjoy the light breeze and some dinner while we waited on the sun to set. Finally we ended up with this. I like the contrast between the sand and clouds here. I think the line of the top of the dune on the left balances well with the sun on the right. I almost went with the 20mm here but I thought things in the distance were looking small enough as it was.
As we were leaving the park, this scene caught my eye. The picnic tables at White Sands are built to block the afternoon sun (which is nearly a necessity). The sky colors and clouds reflecting off the tables and benches caught my eye and it turned out to be blog-worthy!
Here concludes my 2024 visit to White Sands National Park. Perhaps I’ll go back in 2025! Thanks for reading.