I was happy to see that one of the sug­ges­tions in Andrew Gibson’s new ebook (The Evoca­tive Image, see my review here) is some­thing I’ve been doing for years. Which is sim­ply stick­ing around after all the other pho­tog­ra­phers have gone home. Appar­ently, a lot of pho­tog­ra­phers think that once the sun has set, the good light is gone. While that may be true some­times, it’s def­i­nitely not true all the time. All kinds of things can (and often do) hap­pen after the sun has dipped below the hori­zon. The glow in the west­ern sky can turn won­der­ful col­ors, and that glow can light up the scene in front of or behind you, and/or reflect off water or rocks or… I could go on, but I’ll leave it to your imag­i­na­tion. Also, as it gets darker, our eyes can’t see color very well (or at all), but the cam­era still can — and some­times the col­ors the cam­era sees at twi­light are remarkable.

A case in point is White Sands. The pure white of the park’s gyp­sum sand is a near-perfect reflec­tor; if you spend enough time there and look care­fully, you’ll see dunes of almost every imag­in­able hue (see my White Sands pho­tographs gallery). But many of the most unusual (and some­times intense) col­ors occur well before dawn or long after sun­set. Which can be a prob­lem: The National Mon­u­ment is sur­rounded by a mis­sile range and is locked up tight at night. Gate open­ings and clos­ings vary dur­ing the year, so you need to sched­ule your visit care­fully to get as much time as you can between sun­set and gate clos­ing (not to men­tion avoid­ing the windy sea­son and the heat of sum­mer). Pre-dawn pho­tog­ra­phy is pretty much out of the ques­tion, unless you hire a ranger to open the gate early. This spe­cial ser­vice is arranged through the park office and will cost you. (Hint: it’s less painful if you share the cost with other pho­tog­ra­pher friends.) But it is totally worth it.

Tech­ni­cal Data:
Body: Canon EOS 7D
Lens: Canon EF 70-200mm f/4 L USM at 187mm
Expo­sure: ISO 100, f/11, 1/45 second