White Sands National Park, in southern New Mexico, is one home to one of the most visually striking landscapes in the entire parks system. On a bright summer afternoon, the glistening white gypsum might be mistaken for winter's snow. Sunglasses are highly recommended here. As the sun sets below the San Andres and Organ Mountains to the west, the dunes progress through shades of yellow, orange, red, purple, and blue before the night sky takes over.
The play of wind and water mold the dunes into an array of forms and ripples in the sand give the dunes texture. Animal tracks are everywhere, a hint of life in this harsh and challenging environment. Larger mammals such as bobcat, badger, fox, and porcupines patrol the more vegetated edges of the dune field. Few creatures can adapt to the interior dunes, but even there you can find lizards, small mammals, and many invertebrates.
President Hoover designated White Sands National Monument on January 18, 1933. Even then, when the park was considerably more challenging to visit than it is today, 12,000 people visited. The park was redesignated as White Sands National Park in late 2019 and its popularity has continued to grow. I lived in the area from 2015 to 2016 and visited again in early 2024. The crowds I witnessed, even on weekday afternoons, was staggering compared to how I remembered the park. Thankfully, it is easy to escape the crowds with a few minutes of walking away from any of the park roads.
Focused on black and white photography, I am drawn to the lines and shapes formed by contrasting light and shadows on the dunes. The sporadic plants which emerge from the sand underpin the simplicity of the dunes. For the most part, exposure bracketing is not necessary at White Sands. I did employ a good deal of focus bracketing, though, to ensure sharp focus throughout the images. When using a very wide lens (such as my Viltrox 16mm) placed at a sharp angle relative to the dunes, the depth of field can be quite shallow. Therefore, focus stacking is an important technique to properly photograph the dune fields.
When I took the image seen below, my camera was only a foot or two above the sand in the foreground. Several exposures with different focus points were required to get the entire scene sharp.
The region around White Sands National Park is often buffeted by strong winds. When I lived and worked at White Sands Missile Range, alerts warning us about 60+ mile per hour winds were not uncommon. Given these conditions, it is surprising how well-preserved the environment within the park is. The dunes largely maintain their shapes from year to year.
On one of my walks in the park, I came across a mess of trash: soda cans, a Jiffy Pop container, bottles, and other garbage. At first I was indignant, until I got closer and noticed the cans all looked like they were from the 1980s. On subsequent trips, I noticed other such "ancient" trash partially buried in the sand.
Several-decade-old trash is nothing compared to some of the archaeological finds within White Sands National Park. Human footprints have been discovered in a remote corner of the park that may be well over 20,000 years old. While there is still debate on the dating techniques used to arrive at this figure, if it holds true it would drastically alter the current consensus on the peopling of the Americas.
Compared to other "dune" parks, such as Colorado's Great Sand Dunes, hiking the dunes in White Sands is a breeze. The dunes are not particularly tall, with none near the park road exceeding 20 feet or so. The gypsum grains hold firm along the tops of the dunes, making walking there not much more difficult than on any other dirt trail.
One of the more challenging aspects of photographing White Sands is finding a place that displays no footprints, sled tracks, or other signs of human activity. Near most of the parking areas, you must walk a quarter mile or more to find "natural" compositions. Another difficulty when shooting broader landscape shots is avoiding people in the image. Especially at sunset, hundreds of people can be seen standing atop the dunes.
Since the park opens at 7 AM, it can be difficult to focus on early morning photography, especially in the summer when the sun is already above the mountains to the east by the time you can enter the park. However, the park closes one hour after sunset, which allows ample time to walk the dunes, take photographs, and enjoy the late evening light and cooler temperatures.