Death Valley is one of those locations with a narrow range of prime light at dawn. My friend and I preset a target location using our GPS to navigate the two-mile walk the following day in the dark. Ideally, we were looking for sand undisturbed from footprints. The night before, the wind picked up and reset the dunes much like a toy Etch-a-Sketch. The big challenge is not to leave your footprints in areas you want to photograph. You always have to walk forward to avoid this.

The pre-dawn light was beautiful on the crystals of the sand. We captured the sunrise over the dunes, but the light was best before the sun popped up. This was even more true out on the salt flats. Keeping a tripod stable on sand is a challenge. We found that plastic bags under each leg of our tripods helped keep the tripod from sinking.