Desert – Dan Bourque Photography

Archive by category "Desert"

Secret Depths

Sunlight teases pinks and oranges from the purple depths of a sandstone slot canyon in Arizona.

Details: I must confess, it took me more than a year to add this image. At first, it wasn’t one of my favorites, but it’s been hanging on my wall for several months, and I can’t stop staring at it. The colors, textures, and shapes are just mesmerizing, and now it’s my favorite image from this trip! I hope you enjoy it too.

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Sandstone Gauntlet

Otherworldly angles and striations form a narrow gauntlet within a slot canyon in northern Arizona.

Details: Eroded sandstone is one of the most amazing materials from which natural sculptures are carved, and slot canyons are absolutely full of formations of all kinds. The erosion cuts through many layers, each laid down with its striations at a little different angle, a phenomenon very noticeable in this scene. The narrow bit of sand, about two feet wide here, is the passage through the canyon. Simply incredible to experience these wonders!

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Secret Passage

A sliver of silver light illuminates a deep crevice of waving sandstone walls in black and white.

Details: In some portions of Arizona’s sandstone slot canyons, the walls are actually wider at the bottom than the top giving them an otherworldly appearance and the impression that you’re traveling through a secret passage under the earth. Only the noontime sun hits the walls with direct light, and even then shadows are everywhere. This image is beautiful in color, but I love the way the black and white accentuates the textures and shadows.

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Mystical Bend

Sun and shadows play on sandstone waves and red sand inviting one further into the narrow canyon.

Details: Arizona’s slot canyons are often a couple stories tall but only a few feet wide. Their walls twist into fantastical shapes with beautiful colors and striations around every bend. This image tries to capture the inviting and mystical feel of these canyons through the interplay of light, shadow, color, walls and sand.

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Dawn Breaking at the Bend

The morning sun bathes the rim of Horseshoe Bend in orange light as the Colorado River passes by in the shadows below.

Details: Horseshoe Bend is an icon of the American West, and like many places, its glory is really on display at sunset and sunrise. After spending an evening here to catch the sun setting behind the bend, I set out before dawn the next morning to catch the sunrise. It was amazing watching the first beams of light break the horizon and turn the Vermillion Cliffs in the background a beautiful bright orange. I love how the still water reflects the sliver of the bright edges of the rim.

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Peeking Through the Crevice

The sun shines through a tiny crevice illuminating the beautiful carved red walls of a sandstone slot canyon in Arizona.

Details: the sandstone slot canyons of northern Arizona are a photographer’s dream with stunning and impossible looking compositions everywhere you look, especially up. Even a few minutes of time can change a scene dramatically including this one where the sun peeks through a tiny crack at just the right moment to be captured in this dramatic composition of rocky waves and colors.

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Emerging from the Rock

A graceful silhouette with flowing hair of sandstone emerges from flowing walls of carved sandstone in a slot canyon in Arizona.

Details: Arizona’s slot canyons of sandstone are narrow, colorful and spectacular! While many of the walls look like striated waves, some feature dramatic formations resembling human and animal forms. The midday sun shining into the canyon helps illuminate this amazing arch that might otherwise blend into the surrounding walls.

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Sun Through the Thumb

The rays of the rising sun shine through the thumb of the East Mitten in Monument Valley, Arizona as West Mitten looks on.

Details: This was an amazing morning. It was freezing cold, but the cloudless sky offered the promise of seeing the sun as it first broke the horizon. I picked my spot to catch the sun as it transited briefly between the thumb and fingers of East Mitten where it was visible for maybe a minute or two. I love the layered colors along the horizon that the sun illuminated in this image.

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Stormy Sandstone Sea

Light and shadow on waves of red and purple sandstone resembling a tossing sea.

Details: the slot canyons of northern Arizona are incredible. The narrow openings cause the light and shadows to fall in unique and dramatic ways that change throughout the day and accentuate the already mesmerizing lines and flowing curves of the sandstone. These are truly magical places!

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Stars Over Monuments

Stars leave their multi-colored trails over a moonlit Monument Valley in Arizona.

Details: iconic Monument Valley in Arizona is stunning, and star trails are cool, so when you can combine them in one image it’s a real treat! This is the result of more than three hours of total exposure time to capture the movement of the earth against the stars, and a full moon lit up the valley beautifully. The light on the horizon is the approaching dawn.

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Tear in the Stone Curtain

Light runs down a curtain of red sandstone in a slot canyons of the American Southwest.

Details: The area along the Arizona and Utah border is known for its narrow sandstone slot canyons, carved by the elements into elaborate and ornate shapes. While the canyon walls are orange in color, water marks and shadows create beautiful hues of red and purple that change every few minutes with the angle of the sun. I love how the sun plays on the top rocks in this shot while still leaving shadows and purple hues deep in the canyon.

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Mittens Shadow

The shadow of the West Mitten rises against the East Mitten at sunset in this iconic western scene.

Details: Most are familiar with this iconic scene from the American Southwest, but there are only a few weeks a year where the setting sun places the shadow of West Mitten in the middle of East Mitten. A few days earlier, it would have covered almost the entirety of the mitten, but I love this view where the shadow is clear without blocking the beautiful red emanating from East Mitten.

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View of the Twisted Tree

An ancient, twisted juniper looks on at a glorious sunset over Garden of the Gods, Colorado.

Details: I could spend 100 years in Garden of the Gods, Colorado and still not find every photo worthy spot. The park is known for its massive red rock fins and spires, the biggest of which are seen in the background here, but it’s also home to ancient juniper trees that have been twisted and gnarled by centuries of wind, sun and snow. This is one such example, and this small image doesn’t do justice to the intricate grain of the trunk visible in the full-size image. This is actually a panorama of 7 vertical images carefully stitched together to get this entire gorgeous scene at sunset.

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Grand Canyon Gold

The setting sun turns the Grand Canyon into shadows and streaks of rocky gold.

Details: The Grand Canyon is absolutely incredible. It’s even more incredible at sunrise and sunset. It’s even more incredible with unique streaking clouds. Patience paid off, and I was fortunate enough to have all the elements for this shot from the south rim just before sunset. The Colorado River is just visible in the shadows.

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Desert Contrast

A desert storm leaves a contrast of colors and climates at sunset over Red Rock Canyon, Nevada

Details: Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada is one of my favorite places in the west because it’s a land of contrasts. In this scene, a storm has just covered the tall mountains on the right with a layer of snow, while the desert floor remains warm with color. This is a composite carefully stitched from six individual photos to capture this entire dramatic scene from east to west.

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Veiled Majesty

Fleeting clouds uncover the heart of the Milky Way in the badlands of the Paint Mines in Colorado.

Details: Astrophotography is tricky because so much depends on subtleties in the conditions. On this moonlit night, the Milky Way shone bright, but it remained hidden for most of the night behind a veil of high clouds. This was one of the rare breaks this June evening, but the long exposure, bizarre rock formations and bright center of the Milky Way combine to make this an otherworldly image.

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Arizona Twilight

Magnificent rock formations near Sedona, Arizona burn red in the last rays of the day.

Details: Sedona, Arizona is one of the most beautiful places in the American West, and the red buttes of Coconino National Forest surround the town. This image of Courthouse Butte (center) and Bell Rock (right) were taken high up on a National Forest trail south of Sedona just as the sun was setting. All but the very tip of Bell Rock is already covered in shadow from the hills to the west. The dot in the sky is the moon, made smaller by the wide-angle lens needed to soak in this magnificent view.

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Last Light in the Canyon

The last rays of the setting sun set the walls of the Grand Canyon ablaze in orange.

Details: The Grand Canyon is beautiful anytime but mesmerizing at sunset. As the sun sinks to the horizon, it turns the canyon walls from reddish white into brilliant orange and gold. This was taken about two minutes before the sun went below the horizon with the rim painted orange while the deep parts of the canyon fade into hues of blue and purple. A few small patches of snow in the foreground reveal that even though the scene is warm, it is still winter in the high Arizona desert. This is one of my favorite photos I’ve taken because of the great colors in the sky and canyon, the stark contrasts between light and shadow, and the composition of the walls, foreground and the line of the deep canyon far below.

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Paint Mines

Purple flowers line canyon walls striped with bold yellows and reds at the Paint Mines in Colorado.

Details: The Paint Mines Interpretive Park is a little known gem on the eastern plains of Colorado where the forces of erosion and naturally pigmented soil combine for spectacular effect. This is one of my favorite spots for photographing the Milky Way, but it’s an incredible sight in the daylight as well. Heavy rains in early summer brought the addition of wildflowers to the canyons. This hour, when the sun has just left the canyon wall and everything is in mild shadow, is the best time to capture the colors.

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High Desert Sunset

A world of contrasts is captured at sunset in Red Rock Canyon, Nevada.

Details: This is one of my personal favorites because it captures the extremes of the high desert in beautiful Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada. The passing storm has left a layer of snow over the peaks of the Red Rock Escarpment, but down below, the desert is still warm and dry. The sky seems to reflect this transition with the peaks covered in deep blues and the desert in the pinks and purples of sunset.

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Yucca Moon

A still yucca leans toward the moon and a fast-moving night sky at Red Rock Canyon, Nevada.

Details: I love taking long-exposure shots at night, but the conditions have to be just right to get the effect you’re looking for. In this case, something rare happened–the clouds were moving at a fast clip just above, yet there was no wind to move the yucca and make it blurry. The result is a tack-sharp foreground and surreal, swirling sky. The bright dot next to the full moon is Jupiter, and the orange glow is from Las Vegas.

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Gathering Storm over the Desert

Brooding storm clouds reflect the setting sun over Red Rock Canyon in Nevada.

Details: Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area is an amazing place, especially when there’s a storm nearby adding an amazing sky to the amazing rocks. This one was moving fast, and the scattered clouds were an incredible mix of light and dark as they shadowed each other and reflected the sun with the red cast of sunset. The colorful rock formation is the area known as “Calico” for obvious reasons.

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Zion from the Edge of Space

The deep red canyons of Zion National Park as seen from miles above.

Details: I’ve been trying to get this shot for years. I fly between Denver and Las Vegas fairly often, and we always pass just south of Zion National Park. I’ve been thinking this would be a great vantage point for a picture because the canyons are so amazing from this height, and a vertical shot has a sort of “edge of space” feel. It’s taken several tries, but the weather, window, sun, contrails and route all worked out nicely for this one.

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Lightning and the Elephant

Lightning bursts over Elephant Rock at night in Valley of Fire State Park, Nevada.

Details: Valley of Fire, northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, is one of the neatest State Parks I’ve ever been to–it’s chock full of red sandstone formations and arches like aptly named Elephant Rock seen here. I came to this spot hoping for some good Milky Way shots, but an unexpected evening storm made an even more amazing backdrop for this cool scene. This image took nearly an hour of patient shooting of long exposures to get the dramatic bolt seen here. Because the night was pitch black in-between strikes, I used a technique called “light painting” to capture the detail of the rock formation–it’s a manual process and tedious when you’re taking dozens of long-exposure shots, but in this case it was well worth it!

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Valley of Fire and Lightning

A lightning bolt adds powerful color to the sunset over Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada.

Details: Shooting lightning is an exercise in both speed and patience, but the results can be very rewarding. Because of the low light, I was able to take long exposures and hope for a good strike. There were many failures before this success! Believe it or not, there is very little color manipulation in the image–the lightning was indeed pink which made it a perfect compliment to the sunset! This scene was captured on a July evening at Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park near Lake Mead.

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Surreal Skies over Death Valley

Brilliant pink and purple clouds illuminate the skies at sunset over Death Valley National Park, California.

Details: Sometimes I have a hard time believing the beauty of what I’m seeing, and this June evening in Death Valley National Park was one of them. Looking at the skies an hour before, I didn’t think it was going to be a good sunset, but once the sun got under the clouds, it just kept illuminating more of them in brilliant pinks and oranges all around (this is looking south). My jaw was dropped for nearly 20 minutes before the color finally departed. The “rocks” in the foreground are actually salt formations in the area known as the Devils Golf Course which lies below sea level.

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Colorful Death Valley

The setting sun momentarily transforms mountain peaks and skies with splashes of bold color in Death Valley National Park, California.

Details: Just an hour before, the clouds completely obscured the sun (which was nice on such a hot day in June), but just before setting, rays of the sun lit the Death Valley’s eastern mountains in red and painted the clouds. The unique salt formations in the foreground belong to the so-called Devils Golf Course near Badwater, the lowest point in North America. This image was captured in HDR to preserve the delicate highlight and shadow detail in this scene.

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Milky Way over Death Valley

The Milky Way rises like a rocket plume over the salt flats of Death Valley National Park, California.

Details: I’m not much of an underwater photographer, but this is one of my first efforts below sea level ;-). Besides its low elevation, Death Valley is also known for its dark skies which make for excellent viewing of the Milky Way on moonless nights like this one in June–the glow on the horizon is from Las Vegas more than 90 miles away. In the foreground are the salt formations of the so-called Devils Golf Course near Badwater, the lowest point in North America. The formations are lit using a technique called “light painting” using a light source swept over the scene during the 30-second exposure. This shot was taken around 3 AM, and despite the time, it was still 99 degrees out!

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All images and graphics are the property of the photographer and should not be used without permission. All Images copyright Dan Bourque

Category: Desert

Secret Depths

Sandstone Gauntlet

Secret Passage

Mystical Bend

Dawn Breaking at the Bend

Peeking Through the Crevice

Emerging from the Rock

Sun Through the Thumb

Stormy Sandstone Sea

Stars Over Monuments

Tear in the Stone Curtain

Mittens Shadow

View of the Twisted Tree

Grand Canyon Gold

Desert Contrast

Veiled Majesty

Arizona Twilight

Last Light in the Canyon

Paint Mines

High Desert Sunset

Yucca Moon

Gathering Storm over the Desert

Zion from the Edge of Space

Lightning and the Elephant

Valley of Fire and Lightning

Surreal Skies over Death Valley

Colorful Death Valley

Milky Way over Death Valley

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