Interrupted Dune. © Copyright 2022 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Interrupted curve of sand at a Death Valley dune.

Sand dunes seem to have very distinct personalities, at least from what I’ve observed in Death Valley National Park and nearby areas. Perhaps counterintuitively, their forms are much more stable than we might imagine, and the changes are mostly superficial. Their unique qualities come from their orientation to the surrounding landscape, how the light strikes them, their tendency (necessarily quite high!) to be in windy areas, the materials that form the sand, the amount of plant life in and around them, and small but persistent features that they hold — peaks, ridges, valleys, twists and turns, hollows, and more.

This was my first visit to the dunes in this photograph. Based on their orientation and the distance to and height of nearby mountains, I had some idea of what the light might be like before I set foot on them. But until I got there I had no idea of the smaller features that could be revealed by changing light. I photographed this beautiful curving pattern in the morning, shortly after the sunlight arrived over the top of a nearby ridge and slanted across the dunes to create the yin-yang pattern of light and shadow along a curve that was surprisingly broken near its lower end.

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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