Minimalist Photography in the Middle of a Desert

There are a lot of beautiful places for photography, but typically we envision locations teaming with life, greenery, and complexities. Well, deserts are stunning locations in their own right, and this video shows how it can be the case.

I have been lucky enough to have traveled with my camera to many places to shoot, from glaciers in Iceland to rainforests in Costa Rica. There isn't one kind of biome I gravitate toward more than another — I love the mountains and I love the beach — but there is one landscape I have yet to visit: a desert.

In this video, North Borders heads to Stockton sand dunes in New South Wales, Australia, to do some automotive photography with both a camera and his drone. One aspect of shooting with a drone that I have particularly enjoyed is the perspective you can't easily replicate in any other way, especially during golden hour when the light paints shadows. Although desert sands can seem rather plain, when light hits the dunes from an angle, it creates interesting patterns, not to mention the contrast of colors between a deep blue sky and orange sands.

Have you ever done any photography in a desert? Share your experience in the comments.

Rob Baggs's picture

Robert K Baggs is a professional portrait and commercial photographer, educator, and consultant from England. Robert has a First-Class degree in Philosophy and a Master's by Research. In 2015 Robert's work on plagiarism in photography was published as part of several universities' photography degree syllabuses.

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I live in Mesa, AZ & have been photographing the Sonoran Desert part of Tonto National Forest for the past 10 years. The past 18 months I have been surveying my favorite landscapes with a GPS/GLONASS drone. Luckily, the national forest is in Class G (uncontrolled) airspace.

Like most people, I find the Sonoran Desert endlessly fascinating. We wear the moniker 'desert rat' with pride.