The Racetrack - at last

You may recall from an earlier post my failed attempt to get to the 'Racetrack' in Death Valley because the rear shocks on my van exploded on the rough road. I've been plotting my return ever since and finally gave it a shot this week. I had been well advised about the rugged condition of the road, infamous for causing flat tires and other various mechanical issues. Rumour is the cost of a tow back from the Racetrack can run you upwards of a couple grand.

I approached the drive with trepidation and figured the key was to go slowly.... very slowly (which is not an easy thing for me to do). I even resorted to using reverse psychology on myself with a personal challenge: how slowly could I possibly drive and still get there? And so I began the trip, with the new U2 album loaded on my iPod, to help take my mind off how painfully slow I was moving. This was going to be a long 43km (27 mile) drive.

I've driven famously shitty "roads" in central and south America, but the road to the Racetrack is easily the king of washboards (see photo below). The objective of these evil ripples it to make your drive as punishingly uncomfortable as possible and to destroy your car. I tackled them by virtually idling along at about 2okm/hr. At one point during the drive, I was passed by a desert tortoise walking backwards.

After 2.5 hours I was elated to arrive at the Racetrack playa with the legendary windblown rocks. The plan was simple: shoot for the evening, camp out overnight and photograph again in the morning before driving back out.

The sky was perfectly clear for both evening and morning, which made for a tough shoot. The mountains that surround the playa cause abrupt sunrises and sunsets, so the rocks quickly transition from light to shadow. A few clouds would have been ideal to create dramatic light and skies, but the photo gods were not with me. Below are a few of the resulting photos. And yes, I'm going to have to go back there again when there are clouds in the forecast!

Photo 1: Washboard road to the Racetrack

Photo 2: Sunset on the Racetrack
EOS 1DsIII; 17-40/4 lens; Singh-Ray LB Warming polarizer & 2 stop soft edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 200; 1/8 second at f/22; mirror lock-up & cable release

Photo 3: Sunset on the Racetrack
EOS 1DsIII; 17-40/4 lens; Singh-Ray LB Colorcombo polarizer & 2 stop hard edge ND grad
Exposure: ISO 200; 0.6 seconds at f/14; mirror lock-up & cable release

Photo 4: Sunrise on the Racetrack

EOS 1DsIII; 17-40/4 lens; Singh-Ray LB Warming polarizer & 2 stop hard edge ND grad Exposure: ISO 200; 1/15 second at f/18; mirror lock-up & cable release

Death Valley, Joshua Tree and Desert Museum

I'm back in Ontario for 2 weeks to shoot winter stock images and do some assignment work. What a shock this cold weather is... I'll be glad to fly back down to Arizona again soon! While I'm here, the van is down south getting some major work done on it including new head gaskets. It should be like new when I return.

Here are a few photos I've just caught up on processing from the last couple of weeks. All were shot with an EOS 1Dsm3 body.

Photo 1: The road into Death Valley National Park at dusk. 24-70/2.8 lens; Singh-Ray 3 stop hard edge ND grad (4x6" handheld in front of lens)


Photo 2: Joshua Tree against starry sky (light painted the tree with a flashlight). I had very limited time in Joshua TreeNP and my photo mojo was off. It's an incredibly scenic park with gnarly-shaped trees and otherwordly rock formations. I'll be going back next month to make the most of its photographic potential! 24-70/2.8 lens; 44s exposure at f5.6


Photo 3: Mountain Lion (captive) at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum (ASDM). This world-class outdoor living 'museum' has great opportunities to photograph wildlife in a natural looking setting. 500mm IS lens + 1.4x TC


Photo 4: Great Horned Owl (captive) at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. If you make it to the desert museum, be sure to see the live raptor shows offered twice daily... and have your camera ready! 500mm IS lens; 580EX II flash at -2 for fill (the bird was backlit by the natural sunlight)

Death Valley sand dunes

With broken shocks on the van and nightfall approaching, it made sense to camp out for the night and sneak in a morning shoot before leaving the national park for repairs the next morning. As luck would have it, the Stovepipe Wells campground was right next to Death Valley's famed sand dunes. We hiked out before sunrise..... the best dunes were much farther than it looked..... and had an incredible morning of photography out there. The combination of soft light, sand ripples, undulating dunes and mountain backdrops makes this an absolutely awesome spot for landscape photography. It would be hard to take a bad photo there!

Below are some of the results (hope they look ok, because it's difficult to get the raw conversions right when working on the laptop in the van!). All were shot with EOS 1DSm3 body, Singh-Ray LB colorcombo polarizer and 2 stop hard edge ND grads. Lenses were either 24-70 or 17-40. Cable release and mirror lock for every photo.





Raven tracks across the top of the dune:

Bacon below Sea Level

I'm in Death Valley National Park in eastern California. The park is a landscape photographer’s dream, with its varied and almost surreal terrain. Yesterday I visited the Badwater Basin – the lowest spot in the US - where I fried bacon for breakfast at 282ft below sea level. Very cool!


The afternoon plan was to make it to the “Racetrack", a salt flat where small boulders, presumed to have been blown by strong wind, have left their tracks across the playa. This is one of the top 5 places I wanted to photograph in the southwest.

Getting to the Racetrack requires driving 27 miles on a gravel road which is described as "famously bad". The park ranger told me to drive very slowly or it would cause serious damage to the vehicle. I should have listened better!

Approximately 5 miles down the washboard "road", one of the rear shocks on my van exploded. Abandoning hope of getting to the Racetrack, we turned around to figure out where the heck we'd find auto parts and a mechanic. Halfway back to the main road, the other rear shock also exploded. Thankfully the van was driveable and there was a town about an hour and a half away where we found new shocks and a mechanic who was open on Sundays. Everything worked out well and it turned out to be a fairly cheap fix (you can't say that often on VW vans). As a side bonus, this unexpected issue ended up causing changes in plans that lead to two spectacular photo shoots. I'll share some of those photos in the next post. And rest assured, I will get back to the Racetrack... next month. But I'll drive slower - much slower.

Here's the first exploded shock on my van. I used string to stop the bottom half from dragging on the road.


And here's me “communicating” with my buddy Chris while I surveyed the damage. He was laughing hysterically about the incident. Can't really blame him, I would have done the same!


By the way, I always carry a point and shoot camera (a Canon G9) to capture special moments like these!