Death Valley

Death Valley is clearly the heaven for photographers, especially for landscape photographers. It has seemingly endless sand desert, mysterious racetrack, overwhelmic valley view of Dante's View, and Mars-like scenary of Devil's Golf Course and Bad Water just in one grand area. It is almost impossible to see the whole area of Death Valley in a single day. I was not an exception either and had to stay for 3 to 4 days for each of my 9 time visits. It take, on average, 4~5 hours to move from one point to another. Moreover, the best photo times are different depending on points, so we can not use the whole day for taking photos. Although it would be the best to take photos of Death Valley with considering the quality of light in mind, I would like to recommend the 4 day photograph route (described below) for the people who can't afford it. If possible, it is a good choice to stay in Furnace Creek Inn or Furnace Creek Ranch, both of which require reservations in advance. Main photograph points of Dante's View, Zabriskie Point, 17 Mules Trail, Golden Canyon, Devel's Golf Course, Bad Water, and Artist Drive are gathered within 1 hour drive around Furnace Creek. Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes is also easy to visit within one hour drive. When I composed the contents of this book, I placed all photos on left pages with some information about the photos on their right pages respectively. I excluded everything except photos on the left pages not to disturb readers' appreciation, and I did not include any interpretation nor titles for photos for the sake of readers' subjective interpretation. Quite interestingly and fortunately all photos taken during the past 10 years are all mixed up in the order in this book but photo taking dates are indistinguishable because the scenery of Death Valley does not change at all for those 10 years. The only changes are in photo image resolutions (Nikon D200's 10.2megapixels in 2008 to Sony A7R's 36.2megapixels in 2017). I hope that this scenery of Death Valley would not change forever.