Badwater
One of my favourite Death Valley photos, taken a few years ago on the salt pans at Badwater, the lowest point in North America. I think it nicely catches the hot shimmering distances and immensity of Death Valley (this was taken sometime early autumn, with a long(ish) 200mm lens), and that decisive moment when the couple on the left are looking back, videoing the mountains behind me (needless to say, I don’t think I even noticed them doing that when I took this particular shot, but never mind).
What it doesn’t catch, unfortunately, is the acoustic setting. When you walk a long way out onto the valley floor here, the voices and various noises selectively pursue you out into the middle of the valley, a weird and slightly spooky melange of cries and clicks and shouts and snippets of conversation in the otherwise silent super-heated dry air. This photo evokes all that for me too, of course, but it probably doesn’t work quite as well for you.
Everyone takes a photo like this (and we all owe a lot to Richard Misrach‘s “Desert Cantos” when we do it), but this one’s mine, I guess.
