Badwater Basin Salt Flats, Dusk. Death Valley National Park, California. March 29, 2010. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Newly formed salt polygons extend to the horizon as evening clouds gather above the Badwater Basin salt flats, Death Valley National Park, California.

This is one more – and perhaps the last – in a series of photographs I shot on a late-March evening in the Badwater Basin of Death Valley National Park. The light goes through a long and interesting transitional process at this location. Because of the tall Panamint Mountain range to the west, the direct sun leaves the surface of the salt flats quite early, though the hills along the east side of the valley and the more distant mountains can still be sunlit for some time. Once the sun drops behind the Panamints, the “white” salt actually can end up being quite blue since it is illuminated entirely by the diffused light from the blue sky. As I have mentioned before this creates some interesting subjective questions for the photographer. Should the salt be white? Should it be as blue as it looks in the capture? Should it be somewhere in between? I’ve seen interesting and effective photographs that seemed to take each of these approaches.

In this case, because I shot a bit before actual sunset and while some clouds reflected less blue light onto the playa surface, the need to alter to color balance was diminished a bit – which is not to say that I didn’t do some work to balance the colors so that they looked more like what I remembered. A second issues is related, namely that the sky remains very bright while the salt flat surface, in deep shade, is very dark by comparison. On the scene, the eyes/brain compensate and the difference seems less than what the camera records. So, again, some adjustment in post is needed. In this case I made two exposures one stop apart. On just barely handled the brightest portions of the sky without blowing out, while the other did a better job of holding the details for the shadowed salt formations. I combined the two source images in post.

This photograph is not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

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Technical Data:
Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L USM at 17mm
ISO 100, f/16, composite of 1/13 second and 1/6 second exposures

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