White Sands National Park is one of my favorite places to shoot, because there is just so much you can do creatively. The gypsum sand dunes stretch endlessly before you, creating interesting shapes and textures. It's also easy to get lost in them. I took a trip out there one July, and hiked around for hours. I found this lone cottonwood tree in the middle of nowhere among the dunes and used it as a landmark to orient myself. I sat in its shade on hot afternoons. It felt like a friend, and I couldn't leave without taking a photo of my beautiful friend under pink sunset skies. I was so far away when I took this that it looks like a wide angle shot, but its actually shot at 300mm. I loved the way the clouds mirrored the shapes of the dunes.