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This winter in Death Valley I was sitting on the tailgate of my car cleaning my camera (a daily necessity in Death Valley) when a truck stopped behind me, and a large, moustached man, with a cowboy hat got out and approached. He noticed my 4x5 camera on the tripod and introduced himself as a professional photographer.
"Was it windy last night?" he asks.
"No. Not really."
"Hmm, too bad, I've come to shoot the dunes."
He's talking about the mesquite flat dunes. They are lovely, with sharp edges and interesting shapes—they even come complete with a mountain backdrop. They are also close to Stovepipe Wells where there is a hotel so you can wake up at the last possible moment, stumble into your car, and be shooting sunrise shots on the dunes ten minutes after getting out of bed. This fact alone makes them the most photographed subject in the park. But they are also popular among people who like to saunter through the sand and are frequently covered with footprints, interfering with the photographer's desire to portray them as isolated and wild. A good windstorm, of course, erases the footprints returning the dunes to original, unblemished condition.
"Well, we just drove in. We're gonna take a look and then stay the night," He says. "If there's no wind tonight we're out of here. Heading on to the Valley of Fire."
"Valley of Fire? Isn't that about 200 miles away?"
"A little less, but if I can't get my shot here I'd just as soon spend more time there."
"Do you ever shoot any thing else in the park?"
"Not really, we come in for the dunes but if the idiots have been crawling all over them, leaving footprints everywhere, we just move on."
"Have you ever checked out the Panamint Dunes?" I ask. "They get very little foot traffic."
No interest; the Panamint dunes are a few miles from the road.
This wouldn't be so odd if we were in a place called Mesquite Flat Dunes National Park, but we are in Death Valley National Park—the largest national park in the continental United States. In the over 3 million acres that is Death Valley exists an 11,000 foot mountain abutting a valley floor over two hundred feet below sea level, large rocks who, of their own volition, move across a dry lake bed, peculiar salt formations, desert bighorn sheep, joshua tree forests, a funny little plant called the pickleweed that survives in salt water by keeping it's salinity still higher—in all more bizarre and fascinating features than anyone could hope to explore in a lifetime. Yet this photographer is only interested in one thing, the shot of the dunes that everyone else is shooting, the one you can see in the gift shop, the repertoire piece.
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©2003 Mark Meyer
