White Sands National Monument tips/suggestions

I was thinking of going to visit White Sands during my Bosque trip this Thanksgiving. I would appreciate any general tips/suggestions or good places to shoot.

Thanks

Rocky,

I have been to White Sands and highly recommend it - that place is incredible!

We drove back about as far as we could and walked for quite a while to get away from all the footie prints in the sand of others.

My biggest word of caution to you is remember how you got to where you did! We photographed until sunset and wanted to get back to the car before it was totally dark out. So we felt kind of pressed for time and were trying to follow our foot prints back, but often they became intermixed with other people's foot prints. Finally I realized that my hiking boots, discontinued for about 8 years, had an unusual diamond mark on the bottom. Once we had that figured out it was no problem getting back.

Even in November we got pretty warm hiking the dunes so I recommend having some water on hand.

You will enjoy it - it's a great place to visit and photograph.

Hi Rocky, I have been to White Sands more times than I have fingers and toes over the last 20 years. Here's a summary:

For Dune photography, I recommend driving well past the part of the park with lots of vegetation, park and head west through the dunes. If you aren't great with directions or plan on returning to your car after dark, I highly recommend a hand held GPS or at least a good compass because you can get lost in the dunes. Find some dunes that are unspoiled - usually you have to walk less than a half mile before things get completely barren and devoid of human footprints.

For vegetation and wildlife, drive to the edge of the vegetation and hike on some of the nature trails.

Also the area by the visitors center has lots of birds, lizards, etc.

I would suggest stopping into the visitor center the night before to get exact gate open/close times but typically it is at sunrise or earlier.

It truly is a magical place! Enjoy it.

Suggest a "locations" forum to enable us to find this type of usefull recommendations in 2 months time

Actually we are planning to have short synopses on various great photo locations with all of this kind of info in the future.

E.J. Peiker wrote:Actually we are planning to have short synopses on various great photo locations with all of this kind of info in the future.

Very welcome innitiative, US only ?

I never been to the White Sands. However I would recommend a hand held light meter or grey card for any exposure challenge. :roll:

deBult wrote:

E.J. Peiker wrote:Actually we are planning to have short synopses on various great photo locations with all of this kind of info in the future.

Very welcome innitiative, US only ?

No, it would not be restricted to the US only.