White Sands in New Mexico, for me, is not just a place, it's a deep and wonderful experience. The first time I visited, many years ago, it was a moment of transcendence for me. I had never seen a desert with such tones and colors before. It didn't feel like a national park, it was more like some vast wilderness stretching out to infinity. Since then, I've discovered something different each time and have forged a deeper connection with the dunes and ever-changing light.

     

As I stood there this time, the magnitude of capturing the white desert was almost overwhelming. Maybe that sounds melodramatic because all I had to do was raise my camera to my eye, pick something appealing and press the shutter, right? No, I can't do that. Photography, for me, is an immense power in my life that has to be treated with reverence.

       

It would be so easy to become complacent about the technological wonder I hold in my hands. I constantly remind myself that this camera has the potential to create vivid memories in a tangible form. I feel an awesome responsibility to get the picture right. Not so that I can share it with others, no, it’s a purely selfish act. It has much more to do with my own desire to possess the place where I stand and to walk away with a little part of it that is only mine.

             

White Sands is not a static landscape by any means. The wind shifts microscopic grains and destroys and creates dunes over and over again. To spend any time there is to see the landscape itself changing before your very eyes.

   

The places I’d carved out before were gone forever. It would be impossible to find them based on the pictures I’d made back then. So I found new favorite places although they were mostly dictated by the peek-a-boo behavior of the sun. I never had a completely clear sky while I was there this time. I found myself setting up compositions through my viewfinder and then waiting. Sometimes it could be 20 minutes at a time for the sun to reveal itself. When the intense light came, it breathed life and depth into the terrain. Suddenly all kinds of pictures revealed themselves to me. And so it went, chasing the light with each sunrise and sunset, in pursuit of a landscape that can never be fully consumed.

             

White Sands, for me, is as vivid in my mind as it is in the photographs I made. Each pilgrimage has been and will be unique and that's part of the excitement of being there.

     

On the last day of my visit, I left the park satisfied that I had made new memories and a few new photographs. I'll savor them until I return again.

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