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A Macro in Death Valley

Article & Images by Rob Sheppard

Yet when I recently visited Death Valley, I found all sorts of opportunities for close-up and macro work with my Tamron 90mm macro lens: Strange, miniature landscapes (okay, many Death Valley landscapes are strange); patterns in the mud, patterns in the rocks, interesting cactus, some flowers, and even some small wildlife. These made for some wonderful subject matter that gave a more rounded view of Death Valley then simply sticking to the landscapes.

Close-up and macro photography always give unique views of any location you might visit. I do not travel without such capability. Macro photography can be done at any time of day, in any location. You just have to be open to its possibilities!

I had visited Death Valley once before, many years before, but for a very short time. This time I was there for a number of days and had a chance to really explore many parts of the park. Death Valley National Park is the largest national park outside of Alaska. It is huge. Its size can be a bit intimidating and, at first, might lead one to think that this is not a place for macro photography. Yet that would mean losing some great subject matter that offers truly unique images.

When I went to the devil's golf course, the conditions were not ideal for standard landscape photography. This is a strange place filled with mounds of salt and mud, and the salt crystals are very sharp (kneepads or something to kneel on are a necessity). When I got the camera down low and shot with the crystals up close and the landscape behind, I found a very interesting miniature landscape. I used a small aperture of f/16 for depth of field with some images, then went for a more surreal look using f/2.8 and no depth of field.

The salt formations in the foreground are very small. These compositions show the salt formations in the foreground and a view of the devil’s golf course behind, as well as more of Death Valley in the distance.

Patterns are a big part of Death Valley. If you love abstract sorts of images, this is a place to go! Patterns can be found at every scale, from the minute macro to the giant landscape. I found patterns in all sorts of locations, and some of the most interesting were in the dried mud patterns that could be found where water once stood. Death Valley may be one of the driest parts of the country, but it still occasionally does get rain and this will create small ponds and even lakes that eventually dry out.

Some of the most fascinating patterns were surprisingly in a place that I didn't expect to find them, around the sand dunes. In low areas between and near the dunes, there were patches of dried mud that were a lot of fun to play with using the macro lens. A macro lens is ideal for this type of work because you can move from more distant views of the dunes down to tight close-ups of dried mud patterns without doing anything except changing focus.

Low areas near the Eureka dunes occasionally hold water and silt. As they dry, great patterns appear.

The drive to The Racetrack, a playa or dry lake bed in the park, is challenging. I even had a flat tire! Luckily, a wonderful group of German visitors came along and helped change it. It is a fascinating location that has a flat bed of patterned, dry silt and mud. The pattern changes as you move around the playa. I had fun with the 90mm macro finding all sorts of abstract details. I even played with limited depth of field to create unique images that gave a feeling of a cobblestone street.

The Racetrack is a dry lake bed in the north central part of Death Valley with wonderful patterns to photograph.

I originally went to The Racetrack to see the famous sliding rocks and their trails across the dried mud. Sadly, most of these rocks are gone because people have stolen them. Still, the location is quite remarkable and a totally unique place within the park.

Throughout the park there are large expanses of rocky ground with few plants growing in them. First glance, it doesn't look like there is much there that would be worth photographing. Yet the broken rock making up this ground are tremendously varied when you get down and look at them up close. I found all sorts of patterns, shapes and forms as I explored the rocks with a macro lens.

A field of rocks looks gray and uninteresting from a distance, but with a macro lens, it offers wonderful details and photographs that most people miss. Macro lenses can provide unique images for you that others simply won’t have.

I could've spent a lot of time in these barren-looking locations. Sure, there are a lot of uninteresting rocks there, but as you walk through the rocks, you will always find something that would catch your eye. A macro lens takes you places that you might not otherwise go, helping you discover unique views of the landscape that most people pass right on by.

In spite of its name, there is life in Death Valley. Life here is challenging. Temperatures are extreme and there is very little water. Cactus have adapted to the conditions both by storing water and with their spines. The spines are as important for shading the plants to keep them cooler as they are for protection from animals. And both cactus and their spines make for great subject matter when using a macro lens.

One of my favorite shots from Death Valley is of a small barrel cactus shot down at its level with my macro lens nearly wide open. This gave the scene limited depth of field so that the cactus could stand out in the image. I also shot some even closer images, again a change very easy to do with a macro lens, that showed off the spines. Something I really like about macro lenses is that they are very sharp when shot wide open. So often photographers simply want to stop the lens down to its smallest aperture just because they think they have to have a lot of depth of field. That's wasting some great creative opportunities you get when you shoot with the lens wide open or nearly so to give limited depth of field.

Both of these cactus images were shot with the macro lens at nearly its maximum aperture. This helped define the cactus images by limiting depth of field.

This was a poor year for flowers because there had been even less rain than usual. Still, you could find some flowering plants if you look for them. The very common creosote bush was at the peak of bloom while I was in Death Valley. I also found an area that had quite a few rock nettle in bloom.

The dominant shrub of Death Valley is the creosote bush. It has small yellow flowers in the spring that change into white, hairy seed pods later.

Rock nettle have very pretty white flowers, but you have to be very careful because the plants are covered with stinging hairs that can irritate your skin. Most of the time, you don't think of macro photography as being particularly dangerous. But a challenge we all have as photographers is that it is so easy to get so focused in on the close-up image seen with a macro lens that you lose sight of things around you, such as those stinging nettle hairs. Another challenge that the desert provides for macro photography are cactus - they can also be quite painful if you are paying too much attention to the macro image and not enough attention to your surroundings!

Rock nettle has beautiful white flowers that can be wonderful to photograph as long as you are careful not to touch the plant.

Wildlife is sparse in Death Valley. You will sometimes see the tracks of night creatures on the dunes the next morning. They can be fun to photograph as well as to examine and try to figure out what animal was there as well as what they were doing.

A nocturnal kangaroo rat leaves tracks to be found the next morning in the sand.

A very special little creature is the desert pupfish. This is a small, minnow-like fish that lives isolated in some of the springs of Death Valley. The Salt Creek pupfish are very accessible and there is a boardwalk that takes you through the spring area. These remarkable little fish live in conditions saltier than the ocean with extreme temperatures and a home that dries out in the summer. They burrow into the mud and "hibernate" (technically called estivate) until the water comes back.

When I was in Death Valley, the pupfish were readily visible in the shallow Salt Creek. They were challenging to photograph as close subjects because they were constantly moving and going through mating behaviors. But they certainly gave a different view of life in Death Valley.

Salt Creek pupfish live and love against all odds in the heat of Death Valley. This is a male and female.

Actually, shooting with a macro gave me a different view of Death Valley. Sure, I shot pictures of landscapes, but I really enjoyed getting up close and personal with the details as revealed by a macro lens. Death Valley can be intimidating because of its size and scope. For me, the macro lens made it more personal and allow me to connect better with this amazing location.

Rob Sheppard's blog is at www.natureandphotography.com. He is author/photographer of nearly 40 books and is editor-at-large for Outdoor Photographer magazine. He also teaches on-line classes at BetterPhoto.com. His website is at www.robsheppardphoto.com.