Mobius Arch, Alabama Hills, California
The first glint of sunrise bursting over a natural arch in the Owen’s Valley, California, USA. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
I’d got up early to take the classic shot of this eroded granite arch framing the summit of Mt. Whitney as the sunlight illuminates the rocky spires of the Sierra Nevada and had got all the usual shots like this:
Which is a great shot, but not exactly original. As I was dawdling down the gravel of Movie Road to get into position, a huge SUV roared past in the dark, pulled up at the wash out and another photographer began hauling a large amount of equipment out of his vehicle. I gave him a cheery wave and commented that it was now a race to the rather small space underneath the arch. He growled something bad temperedly about never losing and rushed off into the desert. When I got to there he was fussing with a huge amount of camera stuff and a tripod that must have weighed more than several small children (my usual unit of measurement, learned from back-breaking experience). He wasn’t very pleased to share the space and resisted all overtures at conversation, but when he realised I was taking panoramas he suddenly perked up and wanted to know all about it then proceeded to take some himself. Cheeky git.
Anyway, I got the core images then left him to his old school landscape bagging. Remembering one of my cardinal location shooting rules I climbed round to the other side and got the far more dramatic sunburst shot at the top. Always look behind you, you never know what you might be missing.
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Top image: 1/125 second, f13, ISO200 20mm. 7000 x 2738 pixels.
Bottom image: 1/125 second, f3.3, ISO200 20mm. 3200 x 2200 pixels.
Please don’t steal these images, it’s how I make my living.
Badwater, Death Valley, California
The dazzling white salt flat at the bottom of the Death Valley basin, the lowest point in North America at 86 metres below sea level. Image © fotoVoyager 2008.
When you’re on it, the surface is not as dazzlingly white as it appears from afar. The salt (and it is mostly NaCl, like you put on your food – I taste tested it) forms a thin crust and is squeezed into the hexagonal cells you can see here through evaporation cycles. Near to the road you can be surrounded by sightseers swirling on and off tour buses, but walk out into the heat haze in the centre and you can experience the total immersive silence of a true desert wilderness. It takes a little while to get out there because the flats are about 5 miles across in the middle, but you really get a good sense of the scale of this remarkable natural phenomenon. A couple of days later I crossed the Panamint range on the left of this image into the Owen’s Valley to head up to Mt. Whitney, the route of the Badwater Ultramarathon from the lowest to the highest point in the contiguous US. Elite competitors (or lunatics, take your pick) can cover the 135 mile, 13,000 ft. route in under 24 hours. I drove.
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1/180 second, f13, ISO200 28mm
9496 x 2948 pixels. Please don’t steal this image, it’s how I make my living.