Sometimes, the best photographs are made on a whim. I had planned to travel throughout the Cedar Mesa area of Utah in the winter of 2016 with fellow photographer Mike Reeves, but ended up on the wrong end of one of the “worst snowstorms in Southern Utah in 61 years.” As a result, many locations from Zion and Kolob Canyons to Cedar Mesa were relatively inaccessible.
Making lemonade out of lemons, Mr. Reeves and I made the best of it all, taking each day as it came, and giving up on rigid plans in favor of the proverbial “wherever the wind blows us.” As luck would have it, the wind sent us to Death Valley and Stovepipe Wells to photograph the dunes when the conditions elsewhere became inhospitable.
I had not been to Death Valley since the winter of 2011, and found it refreshing. Armed with a new Canon zoom lens, I saw the abstract shapes and suggestions of the dunes irresistible. An actual windstorm four days prior had left the dunes relatively pristine, and with only a few transient footprints criss-crossing each scene. As a result, we spent hours in the dunes, well into the heat of the afternoon sun and past dusk. It felt endlessly productive.