Deserts can make for very dramatic and beautiful landscapes but it can also be challenging to avoid your photos appearing flat and uninteresting. Here are 6 tips to help you on your way.
1. Catch the Right Light
It’s no secret that photographing in the early morning or late afternoon provides a wonderfully soft light for your images which helps you avoid making them look flat – and the desert is no exception. The soft light can give the sand a beautiful glow and in the above photo, the red late afternoon light has really brought out the colour of the sand. As always, if you are going to be using a slow shutter speed make sure you have a tripod.
2. Point of Interest
One of the main challenges of photographing the desert is to avoid images looking uninteresting. After all, just photographing endless sand isn’t going to make your images stand out. Instead, try to find a point of interest such a shrub, a sand dune, a palm tree or even people. The images below would have looked pretty dull had they not had a point of interest in them.
3. Lines and Patterns
One of the things I love about photographing in the desert is the wonderful sand lines that the wind creates. These can look fantastic in photos as the shadows behind them can really make them stand out. So sometimes it worth looking down, instead of trying to capture the whole scene. Simply crouch down and focus on the detail in the sand.
4. Tell a Story
When photographing in the desert, it’s tempting to always photograph the landscape. The dramatic sand dunes are usually what wow us when we look at pictures. But it’s also worth capturing images that can tell a story. It might be a local man walking his camels like the photo above, some footprints in the sand or an animal sleeping in the shade of a tree. This can add variety to your collection and avoid your images looking too similar.
5. The Unusual
One the challenges we photographers always face is how to capture images which look diverse and unusual. Sometimes this happens by luck but the majority of the time you have to be prepared to pre-visualise the shot and work for it. I had driven on this road in UAE several times during my stay and always wondered what it might look like in the vastness of the desert from further away. So one day I walked up the biggest sand dune I could find – which was no easy task – and I was rewarded with this shot which highlights the vast emptiness of the desert.
6. Look after your Camera
Unfortunately sand can be extremely destructive to cameras so you should take extra care in the desert. Even on the calmest of days the wind blows sand so I always wrap my camera in a cloth when I’m not using it. I also always have a UV filter on lenses to protect the glass but in the desert this is even more imperative. I would much rather have to replace a cheap filter than have to repair a scratched lens glass. I never change lenses (I would take two cameras if necessary) and clean my camera as soon as I get to my hotel room.
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