Note: This is the introductory essay that accompanies my new portfolio of work from White Sands National Park, plus a small selection of photos below. You can also read this essay and see the full collection of photos in the PDF ebook (one click to download, no sign-up required).
When practicing nature photography in a new place, making a connection with the landscape sometimes feels effortless and instantaneous. With my first footsteps in such a place, many composition ideas spring to mind and a range of subjects are immediately compelling. Other places require more work, more time, better timing, a different mindset—and sometimes all of the above.
In April 2024, five photography colleague, Shanda Akin, Nancy Kurokawa, Martha Montiel, Jeanie Sumrall-Ajero, and Brie Stockwell, invited me to join them on a trip to White Sands National Park (WSNP). As the new person to this established group of friends, I was a bit nervous about the social side of the trip, expecting that the photography part would be easier. I had it backwards, as I immediately felt generously welcomed into this friendly, smart group of women but struggled, from the start, with my time in the field.
WSNP is a place that has required much more work during the photographic process for me. This portfolio is the result of that work, a word I use intentionally because the photography did not gracefully flow. I think I got somewhere though, as I am happy with the photos, especially when considered as a full body of work (five photos are from my August 2012 trip to the park and the rest are from April 2024).
First, a bit of important context: WSNP is located in southern New Mexico, near both El Paso, Texas, and the United States border with Mexico. The Tularosa Basin is home to WSNP, the White Sands Missile Range, and Holloman Air Force Base, with overlapping land usage between these entities converging among the white dunes. This unusual arrangement means that visiting this park comes with significant restrictions. The park opens at 7:00 am year-round and closes one hour after sunset. Depending on the time of year, a 7:00 am sunrise opening can coincide with lovely early morning light, or it can mean arriving firmly in what most landscape photographers would consider the more boring light of midday.
On the sunset side, the park closes one hour after the local sunset time. This all sounds good…until you start adding up the times. It will take at least twenty minutes to drive from your parking spot to the exit gate. Because of the heavy visitation to the area, there are often a lot of footprints on the dunes near the parking areas. Add in at least another twenty minutes to half hour for walking back to the car. In stark desert landscapes such as this, my favorite time of day, before sunrise and after sunset, is what I call the “glow about the land” when soft pinks wash over the landscape, gradually fading to reds, purples, and blues as twilight sets in. With the park closing time, this light happens WHILE YOU ARE WALKING BACK TO THE CAR.
My first brief trip to White Sands National Monument, in 2012, included a backpacking trip into the dunes. We visited in August when it was incredibly hot. With the white gypsum sand staying cool, we took off our shoes and hiked with bare feet. Laying down on the cool sand also provided a lovely respite from the heat of day—heat that never really dissipated much at night. Despite the high temperatures, we freely explored the dune field surrounding the backcountry campsites at both sunrise and sunset, with a full spectrum of pastel light evolving over the course of an hour or more, two times per day. Years later, with the COVID pandemic, WSNP eliminated backpacking permits for the foreseeable future and with those permits went the opportunity to more easily photograph the park at sunrise and sunset without as many restrictions. In mentally planning for my 2024 visit to the park, I did not fully consider how much the constraints of the opening and closing times would affect my photographic mindset.
I am generally open-minded about light and can often find opportunities outside of conventionally beautiful conditions so the park hours on their own were fine as I prepared for this trip. In the moment though, the late open and the early close significantly affected my process. I typically photograph by wandering around and seeing what sparks my interest or curiosity, and this process takes a lot of time. As I actually started photographing each day, the limited hours made the wandering feel so rushed without time to fully explore any idea.
In choosing to visit and photograph this park, you choose to accept these significant constraints. These limitations represent the first layer of work in connecting with the landscape. The second layer, at least for me, is the landscape itself. As previously noted, the dunes are made of gypsum, which glistens during the middle of a clear day. Being white, these reflective dunes also serve as a canvas for a range of colors as the day starts and ends. At first glance, the landscape and the way it interacts with the light is a beautiful experience.
With more attention, chaos starts to creep in at the edges and then feels visually overwhelming. The dunes themselves are like long, low mounded snakes emerging from an alkali flat. These sand snakes repeat almost to the horizon, eventually meeting mountains in the far background from most vantage points. The alkali flats in between range from clean fields of short, jagged repeating ridges to explosions of botanical chaos filling the voids between dunes. During our 2024 visit, the sand dunes themselves were mostly a mess, with insect and small mammal tracks creating a matrix of textured lines across the surface. Stringy mats of yucca roots, exposed as the sand shifts over time, expanded in all directions in some spots. Petite sand verbena, with their light purple blooms, were interspersed with lanky desert grasses, saltbush, Mormon tea, hoary rosemary mint, and the occasional cottonwood tree, all growing with no order whatsoever.
During our first outing, I initially felt tentative being around new friends and wanted to defer to them as part of fitting into the group. This meant giving up some of my normal creative process (a worthwhile compromise). I found the visual chaos impossible to organize and as I walked back to the car, right as the dunes started to glow after sunset, frustration bubbled up because I did not know where to start in actually organizing my ideas into photos given the context and constraints. I quickly realized that during my first trip to the park, I ended up, based on luck alone, in a good, easy spot for making photos.
By the time we got to the park the following morning, I had decided to take the more creatively comfortable route and return to the familiar. I could take the same ideas I have thoroughly worked with in Death Valley and try to apply them here. I would most definitely not be breaking new ground but at least I would be creating. When looking at the landscape in front of me, I worked on breaking it down and simplifying. A single idea, like a bit of shadow from a yucca falling on a patch of ripples in the sparkling sand, helped organize the chaos in front of me. Using a very long telephoto lens paired with focus stacking finally helped me organize all of those low, dispersed dunal snakes into compressed, pleasing layers. This interpretation of the park is a bit of a visual trick—photographic disinformation—but at least I was creating. And with these acts of observing and creating, I was finally starting to feel some fresh sparks of connection and these sparks led to new ideas.
By the end of the trip, I made a few attempts at compositions that encompassed and embraced more of the chaos but never quite had enough time to really get there. Maybe I could make progress on those concepts with a return trip to the park. Or maybe not… The way I seem to connect with this place is breaking it down into pieces and then reassembling it into a whole, or at least a more complete impression, through a full portfolio like this.
As nature photographers, we are always working with constraints. Sometimes the constraints pile up in a way that makes connecting with a place and and photographing it especially challenging. In these circumstances, I have found that working is better than waiting because sometimes the act of working will get you there in the end. With this trip, I could have waited to start photographing until I found better, more original compositions or only photographed during the very short periods of optimal light. Instead, by getting to work and breaking down the landscape into simple subjects, I was able to create this collection. With more time in the park, I hope I could get to crafting some more complex compositions but for now, this body of work feels satisfying enough.
Sarah Marino is a full-time photographer, nature enthusiast, and writer based in southwestern Colorado. In addition to photographing grand landscapes, Sarah is best known for her photographs of smaller subjects including intimate landscapes, abstract renditions of natural subjects, and creative portraits of plants and trees. Sarah is the author or co-author of a diverse range of educational resources for nature photographers on subjects including composition and visual design, photographing nature’s small scenes, black and white photography, Death Valley National Park, and Yellowstone National Park. Sarah, a co-founder of the Nature First Alliance for Responsible Nature Photography, also seeks to promote the responsible stewardship of natural and wild places through her photography and teaching.