In part two of this New Mexico adventure I wanted to look at one of my images from Cloudcroft and some from White Sands.
Ben and I decided to visit Cloudcroft for the morning to drive around town and look in a few of the shops. On our way back to we stopped at a scenic overlook above an old wooden trestle bridge. Everyone who has been to that overlook and stood at the rail has probably taken a similar picture. That doesn’t make it bad though, it still captures a memory of that point in the trip and something that I am glad I got to see.
Our plan for the evening was to go to White Sands National Park and shoot during sunset. One of the challenges of sand dune photography is being mindful of where I walked and avoiding footprints in the frame of my photos. White Sands is such a unique place that I wanted to get an abstract image to show how different and interesting it is.
As the sun sank it started to create fascinating shapes in the shadows throughout the dunes. These triangular shadows, and the way they mirrored each other, caught my eye. This is one of my favorite images from this trip.
As the sun sank lower the mountains were turning into silhouettes and the shadows in the dunes were getting more dominant. Anything that comes in threes is generally a good thing. Here the three dunes create a natural path for the eye to follow to the mountains in the background. I chose to make this a black and white image so I could take advantage the way the light was glinting off of the sand.
This was the last stop at White Sands, where the road ended. I wanted to get a shot that showed how easy it would be to get lost in the dunes if you didn’t know which direction you had come from. What I saw was a sea of dunes all the way up to the silhouette of the mountain.
This whole adventure was a blast! I got to visit some amazing places and take some great photos. I even got to attempt sand sledding. Be sure to check that out along with more on these images in this month’s video below. Bye for now.