Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Awake by MasonCummings Add me http://ift.tt/1fqSViy



The other weekend I went on a bit of a whirlwind tour with my buddy Eric - lots of driving and hiking with very little sleeping. Despite our jam-packed itinerary, I had initially thought of the Mesquite Dunes as my primary destination. I planned to walk around for several hours before sunset to find a solid comp, and I even rented a lens for the weekend specifically to shoot the dunes. I knew it was going to be hot down there, but we started out that morning hiking for hours in the freezing cold at 12,000 feet, so some hopeful yet benighted part of me was actually looking forward to the warmer air on the valley floor. It wasn't long after descending into Stovepipe Wells that we found ourselves sitting under the gas station awning, seeking relief in a cold hefeweizen and thinking, "Why the heck are we down here right now?" I'm not built for heat, and I wasn't about to trudge through the sand in 100 degrees for two hours until the sun went down. We decided to at least cruise over to the parking lot just to check out the dunes before reevaluating our plan to camp in the area. They weren't nearly as tracked-out as they get in the winter, but the heat still didn't deter a few crazy people from venturing out into the vast expanse of sand. Thankfully I had envisioned people in my photo, so I walked about 50 yards from the car, fired a few quick shots and decided to call it at that. This shot could have probably benefited from waiting another half hour for the light to change while I found a better comp. We figured it best to use the remaining daylight to hoof it back up to the Alabama Hills, where sunrise opportunities and reasonable temperatures awaited. Being that I had barely managed to nab four hours of sleep in the two days prior, waiting and driving at night would have been just about as silly as hiking through the scorching desert. Nonetheless, I'm still happy to get a half-way decent shot out of the stop that was even remotely close to what I originally had in mind! http://ift.tt/1hhTWKb

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