Dust in the Wind

The Adventure:
As winter begins to loosen its grip on the Wasatch mountains, their beauty seems to fade from the brilliant whites of winter to the dull of dirty brown. Not feeling excited to run around in the Wasatch this week I made a quick photo trip to ‘Little Sahara,’ a small Utah state park about an hour or so from home. This small out of the way park is home to some spectacular landscape photography, although I have yet to see another landscape photographer here.
I stepped out of my trusty truck right at the dunes edge and immediately knew I was in for a real treat! Atop the first dune I was blasted with a 60mph wind carving up the steep slope and blasting me with dune sand. I soon found an interesting photograph and started to set up. In a matter of minutes, my tripod, all my gear and myself was covered in sand. I quickly retreated out of the direct wind to asses the damage. I quickly realized that this day was going to be a total loss, or was it? Needless to say, I do not give in too easily. I have learned through my years of experience and firmly believe that there is always something beautiful so long as we are willing to open our eyes enough to see it. However, today is a little difficult to see through the blasting sand, but I know it is there.
After walking a few miles over dune after dune, I looked back towards the mountains from where I had come and saw a beautiful display of clouds and mountains as they mingled with the dunes before me. I quickly saw how I wanted to capture the image, but knew my traditional set-up procedure would not be possible. Knowing I could not set up the way I normally did, I simply set all my camera settings while wrapped around my coat and then fell to my knees and captured the image you see here. You can download this image as screen wallpaper by clicking here, or visiting my workshops page. This day was not a total loss, but one of inspiration.

The Photo Lesson:
I think the lesson here is very short. Pre-visualize your images, and know your camera well. By understanding how I wanted to frame this image in my mind (before looking through the viewfinder) I was able to make the correct settings on my camera (depth of field, focal length, etc.) and then quickly frame and shoot. If I were to take my traditional approach in these elements no doubt my gear would be completely destroyed and I would be purchasing a new camera setup right now. However, by pre-visualizing this shot, and making the settings in a protected zone, I was able to capture my vision with no substantial damage to my gear.