A Photographer’s Vision

Day’s End, Hell’s Gate, Death Valley NP

I just returned from a spectacular workshop in Death Valley, one of the most fascinatingly unique locations on Earth. After missing Death Valley last year, it was especially nice to return. (Of course it didn’t hurt that I had a great group that enjoyed fantastic conditions from beginning to end.)

I first got to know Death Valley as a kid, when my family camped there several times over the Christmas school break. We’d spend a most of the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day exploring all kinds of cool stuff that would thrill any young boy: Scotty’s Castle, Rhyolite (a ghost town), and collections of abandoned mining equipment scattered about the desert. We also went to all the standard vistas like Zabriskie Point and Dante’s View, and hiked some of the shorter, most popular trails (Golden Canyon, Mosaic Canyon, Natural Bridge). But with all the cool old stuff, I was much less interested in the scenery and hiking part of those trips, and never really registered Death Valley’s spectacular natural beauty.

About 20 years ago I returned with a camera and saw Death Valley in a completely different way. Suddenly, beauty was everywhere. It would have been easy to—and I probably did—think to myself some version of, “Gee, I don’t remember Death Valley being this beautiful.”

When traveling more with my camera to other childhood family vacation destinations kept eliciting similar epiphanies, I started noticing the way photography was enhancing my overall view of the world. Suddenly, I was seeing the world as a photographer and finding beauty everywhere.

Today, camera or not, my eyes naturally scan my surroundings for scenes, large and small, that resonate personally. Even without a camera, I now seem to unconsciously create compositions in my brain, mentally identifying striking features and their relationships to one another, and figuring out the best way to position myself and frame the scene.

This photographer’s vision isn’t limited to a scene’s physical objects, it also extends to weather and light, both current and potential. What conditions will complement this scene best, and how do I get here to enjoy them? Warm early/late light, moonrise or moonset, fall color, overcast, the Milky Way, a reflection, sunstar—anything that might elevate the scene.

I don’t think this makes me especially unique—in fact I’d venture to guess that many (most?) serious nature photographers view the natural world similarly. And for those who don’t, I believe it’s a quality that can be cultivated with a little conscious practice until it comes naturally.

A great example of putting this mindset to use came the day before this year’s Death Valley workshop, while checking out the conditions at Hell’s Gate on Daylight Pass Road. At the end of an 8-hour drive that started a 7:00 a.m. (to ensure I could get here before dark), I pulled up to Hell’s Gate about 15 minutes before sunset.

I’ve been taking my groups here on my workshop’s first night for many years, but despite that familiarity, there are a few variables I always like to check out for their current status. And with heavy rain earlier this winter washing out many Death Valley roads and locations, I was especially keen to make sure there would be no surprises here.

What I like about Hell’s Gate is that it’s not commonly shot view, and it has a variety of photography options in multiple directions. Directly across the road from the Hell’s Gate parking area is a small mound dotted with photogenic rocks and shrubs that all make nice foregrounds for the long view down the valley toward Telescope Peak and beyond, and west toward pyramid-shaped Death Valley Buttes. There’s even a mini-canyon—7-foot vertical walls and no more than 30-feet long—that can be used to frame the view of the Funeral Mountains to the east and south.

Uphill from this little canyon is a short (100 yards or so) but steep (-ish) trail to an elevated prominence with a similar view. Foreground options up here include more striking rocks, plus an assortment of very photogenic cacti. My favorites are the many clumps of barrel cactus sprinkled around the surrounding slopes. Depending on the year, the condition of the barrel cacti can range from fresh pink with small flowers, to a dried out brown-gray. Though there were no flowers this year, I was happy to see that they were all beautifully pink and alive.

Walking up the trail on this visit, my eyes picked out the best cacti and I started making mental pictures without really realizing it. A little later, visualizing a potential sunstar I took note of exactly when and where the sun would drop behind the nearby buttes and distant Cottonwood Mountains.

Satisfied all was well, I hopped in my car and, instead of making the 30-minute drive to my hotel in Furnace Creek, I added 2 hours to my already long day by detouring to Pahrump so I purchase essential grocery items I’d foolishly left at home. (This is actually an improvement over my prior Death Valley workshop, when I forgot to bring my computer. And in my defense, that’s the only time in my 20 years of leading workshops I’ve done that, and I now triple-check to ensure it never happens again.)

But anyway… When I returned to Hell’s Gate with my group the following evening, I was able to point out all the possibilities and describe exactly what the light would do as the sun dropped. I encouraged everyone to identify the views they like best, as well as foregrounds to put with them, so they wouldn’t be scrambling around looking for shots when the light was at its best. (I’ve noticed that this kind of anticipation doesn’t happen naturally for some people at the start of a workshop, so it’s become a particular point of emphasis.)

On the first shoot of any workshop I try to get around to everyone and therefore rarely shoot, but as the sun dropped and I saw that everyone was quite content, I returned to a composition that I’d identified the prior evening.

Earlier I’d pointed out to my group the very large barrel cactus clump perched on the hillside about 20 feet above the trail, but I think the steep slope covered with loose rock, not to mention lots of easier access compositions nearby, had discouraged them from scaling the hill. So up I went. Reaching my target cactus, I checked out the even larger barrel cactus clump farther up the hill and maybe 20 feet away.

My vision on the first visit was to frame Death Valley Buttes and the sunstar (if the clouds permitted it) with these two cacti; once I was actually in position in front of the closest barrel cactus, I was pleased to confirm that what I’d visualized would in fact work. I just had to tweak my composition to account for the rocks at my feet and clouds near the horizon. The other thing I had to be careful about was my camera bag, which could very easily tumble down the hillside if I didn’t plant it firmly braces and balanced on the rocks.

To deemphasize the (ugly) brown foreground, I dropped my tripod to about a foot above the ground, which made the foreground all about the beautiful cactus and interesting rocks. And though scenes rarely fully cooperate with my goal for clean borders, I took special care to find the best place to cut the rocks at the bottom and sides of the frame, and the clouds at the top.

When I was satisfied with my composition, I picked my focus point—with the closest rocks about 18 inches away, it helped that I already needed to stop way down for the sunstar. Since I wanted everything in this frame sharp, I applied my tried-and-true seat-of-the-pants focus point technique: pick the closest thing that must be sharp (the rocks), then focus a little bit behind it—because focusing on the closest thing gives me sharpness in front I don’t need. (“A little bit” varies with the scene, focal length, f-stop, and subject distance, but the more you do this, the better you get at deciding what “a little bit” is.) I chose f/20 and focused on the close cactus, about 2 feet away.

When the sun reached the horizon, I started with a shutter speed that the balanced black shadows and white highlights as much as possible (knowing I’d be able to recover some of each in processing), and started clicking. After each click, I adjusted my exposure in 2/3 stop increments—first up about 3 stops above my starting point, then back down to 3 stops to below, continuing until the sun disappeared. This gave me a broad range of exposures to choose between on my computer later.

When we were finished, everyone seemed pretty happy with our start. Though I didn’t get a chance to process my own images until after the workshop, from what I saw in the image review, I’d say their excitement was justified.