Death Valley Report Part 2: Badwater Basin

Badwater Basin is an endorheic basin in Death Valley. An endorheic basin is one that collects water but has no outflow to other bodies of water. These can form some of the largest lakes in the world, such as the Caspian Sea. Badwater Basin features a spring-fed pool, located near the road that passes the site. The accumulated salts in the basin make the water undrinkable, earning it it's name. As you walk out onto the salt flats, you'll notice ridges that form polygonal shapes on the surface of the dried mud. These shapes form through the repeated cycle of freezing, thawing, and evaporation that pushes the salt crystals into these forms.

I was in Death Valley photographing with my friend Kristen Wilkinson, and we decided our first visit to Badwater Basin would be for sunset photographs. We wanted to be able to see where we were going the first time out there, to get familiar with the area before the light went down. I determined the sun was going to set over the left shoulder of Telescope Peak, the highest peak of the Panamint Mountain Range and highest point in Death Valley National Park. It seemed a bit ironic that we were seeing it while standing in the lowest point of the park. Once I determined that I decided to wait for the sun to start to slide behind the mountains, and made Badwater Sunset, above.

I quickly became enamored of the different shapes the salt crystals made, and also loved the mountains that created the backgrounds for my photographs. With that in mind, I began looking for interesting shapes I could place in front of the mountains. After the sun sank lower behind the mountains, I waited for the sky to turn a warm pink tone and made "Badwater Twilight".

Landscape photography is a funny thing. Most of the time, landscape photographers want interesting skies with lots of interesting clouds. This first sunset at Badwater Basin, we had clear skies, which normally would annoy me, but trying to compose photographs with the patterns in the foreground and the mountains in the background meant I could minimize the sky so it didn't matter much.

One time photographers LOVE clear skies is when trying to photograph the stars above a landscape. Death Valley National Park is a dark sky park, meaning there is little to no light pollution and the land is protected for scientific, natural, educational, or cultural value, or set aside for recreational purposes. With the skies being clear, Kristen and I decided to stick around a bit and make sure we got some night skies. It's still a bit too early in the year to see the Milky Way in the northern hemisphere, but star-filled skies are still a lot of fun to photograph!

While my sunset shots were taken facing west toward the Panamint Range, I faced to the South for "Celestial Basin", above, and to the north for "All Points North", below.

The day after we photographed sunset and night sky in Badwater Basin, we spent our time in other areas of the park. But remembering the alpenglow I captured on the mountains from my morning at Zabriskie Point, I decided I wanted to try and capture that in the basin. We arrived early and made our way out onto the salt flats - about a mile and a half walk - and waited for the light to come up. We were the first ones there. As we stood in the middle of the salt flats, there were no cars passing on the road, and no one else on the salt flats. I was struck by how utterly silent things were. Out there, sound carries for miles. My previous visit, I could hear clearly a conversation happening over a half mile away. On this morning, for a brief time, I stood there in perfect silence. No bird song, no people talking, no cars driving. It was perfect.