white sands

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In honor of our road trip this past weekend, I thought I would use this week to reflect on all the travel and adventures my friend Sue and I have had together. We have been friends for over 15 years. It’s crazy how long we’ve known each other considering we’re just 16 years old. LOL Just Kidding. But it’s safe to say that we have lots of fun and embarrassing stories about each other. Just because we don’t live within 20 minutes of each other now, doesn’t mean we won’t be friends for life.

So this image is from our very first road trip across the country together. Neither one of us had ever been to New Mexico before so we ended up spending the majority of our trip in the state. We went all over but my absolute favorite place was definietly White Sands National Monument. It had been on my list to visit for forever and this road trip was the perfect opportunity to visit. But we were super lucky. The only night that we had planned on staying in Alamogordo, New Mexico was a night a storm was approaching. It was comin in hot right around sunset and made for the best moody skies. It was like a dream.

I distinctly remember being so excited trying to climb up these white sand hills but being so out of breath because 1. climbing up sand is difficult but also 2. because I was so excited to be there. ESPECIALLY with the storm approaching. I handed my camera off to Sue to ask her to take some pictures of me but I could barely get my sentences out. She looked at me with so much concern like “Are you ok?” And I just screamed, “Yea I’m just excited” and ran to my posing spot. LOL.

My camera settings for this image is F6.3 at 1/10th sec and ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 28-70mm lens.

 

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I know I’ve been talking about New Mexico a lot but I just loved it. It was my first time ever in the state, we spent most of our time on our road trip in New Mexico and overall, it’s just awesome. And top of that list was definietly, 100% White Sands National Monument.

It was a lot smaller of a park and a lot quieter of a place in general. I never felt like it was too crowded or impossible to take images without anybody in it. It was just so chill. I love this image in particular because it’s just so simple and what it’s really like being there. It reminds me of just walking along the sand – never too hot and relaxing in between your toes.  The best was being able to walk around the entire park without any shoes on.  I feel like every national park should be like that (or is that the asian side of me wanting to take my shoes off everywhere?). It was very much like walking along a beach with no ocean.

Besides the natural beauty of it, my favorite part of the park was the sledding! When we were first coming in to the park, there were these other two girls who were walking out. They offered us their snow sleds and without hesistation, we took them. Sliding down these dunes was so much fun. A lot better than I thought it would be. I felt like I was in elementary school again and it was our first snow day of the year. You can actually get a pretty good speed on these dunes if you find the right one.

This image was taken bright and early in the morning, right when the park opened. Don’t try to come for sunrise, you will be disappointed.

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I know its wrong but whenever I travel and check the hours for a national park, I kinda just assume it’s more like a guideline as opposed to an actual rule. I think it’s because there have been so many times at so many different parks that the gates are left open and I just drive right through. Well this is definietly not the case at White Sands National Monument. They closed the gate! I was so disappointed that we woke up early just to go take some sunrise shots and it was closed.

But since we were already up, dressed and ready to take some pictures, we decided to pull over at this camp site spot near the entrance of the park. It had really pretty cactuses and a lake that maybe we could get a few shots in. I didn’t really expect much but then I saw these three birds just hanging out in the water. I knew they were going to fly away as soon as they saw me so I did my best to slowly approach them. I only had my 28-70mm so I wasn’t able to zoom super close to them like I would have wanted to. Regardless, I’m really happy that I was able to capture them taking off. My favorite part of the image is that one little water drop in the middle of the second and third bird. Such small details like that can really make an image. For me, my eye keeps on going straight to that spot and I love it!

So listen to me now. If you’re going to White Sands National Monument, definietly get your beauty sleep in so you can be ready to shoot sunset. Sunset is where it’s at at White Sands! 

Settings for this image was F7.1 at 1/200th of a second ISO 500.