By André Costantini
Every now and then you get an image which does exactly what you want it to. The elements come together. The focus is right. The depth of field is what you want. The image is sharp. The clouds are behaving. The composition is unique. The light is great. The mood is what you want to convey.
One such image came together at the White Sands National Monument in New Mexico. I had the idea that I wanted to get there at night (early in the morning) and shoot through the morning. But after checking the parks hours (which open at 7am), I figured I could settle with sunrise. Sunrise occurred at 7:28am that morning which gave us time to drive in, find a spot and start shooting. The surreal nature of the images mimicked the surreal nature of the place. For one, if you are there in winter with a down coat and wool hat you are still chilly as it is almost freezing and you are surrounded by masses of white sand in all directions, which you could swear is snow. Even the road into the park at some point seizes to be paved and is simply plowed.
Anyhow, the drive over was a spectacular display of light and color upon the clouds in a pre-dawn show. We were the first car in at 6:57am. I guess the Ranger got in a few minutes early. So we sped in, found a spot and started shooting and didn't leave until over three hours later. It was one of those cases where it wasn't until later I realized the exact shot that I had created. I mean, I was aware that during the course of the morning, I had gotten some nice images, but it was not until that evening when I looked though them that one in particular seemed to be the apparent winner. The soft curve of the sand against the stark plant, the distant mountains and the moon with enough sunlight to have detail in it as well as the rest of the scene and finally the clouds to balance the composition. Like I said, every now and then you get an image which does exactly what you want it to and this was one of those mornings.
The image was taken with the Tamron 70-300mm lens 110mm at f11, 1/320th of a second ISO 200.
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