Shooting great photography in the desert can be pretty challenging compared to other types of landscapes.  Besides the obvious dangers of heatstroke and venomous critters, many challenges are not as apparent.  Here are some issues and tips to combat them when shooting in the desert.

Harsh Lighting Conditions

Deserts have what appears to be excellent lighting when you are in the field.  A bright sunny cloudless sky is quite a beautiful sight and may trick you into thinking all you need to do is meter your camera and use ISO 100.  Unfortunately, looks are deceiving, and more often than not you are walking through a harsh lighting scenario.  Your own eyes are excellent at adjusting to different lighting conditions, so it may be hard to recognize the difference between normal sunny conditions and very bright conditions.  I think the best way to tell this is to look at jagged rocks that are almost always found in most arid landscapes.  On the faces that are highlighted by the most sunlight, observe them closely to see if they are pretty reflective or not.

In some cases, these faces almost appear bright white regardless of the color of the rock.  This will show up more so in your photographs.  You may take a whole day’s worth of photographs only to find when you are editing them that the highlights on everything are extreme and may appear to be overexposed which in all reality are not.

This problem can be resolved by using a Graduated Neutral Density filter.  These filters vary, but the central concept behind the filter is that about half of the filter is airbrushed with a darker tint.  When you shoot,  turn the filter so that the tinted side covers the foreground.  The objects on the ground will appear to be lit more naturally and will exhibit less harsh highlights.

Another problem that can occur in harsh lighting conditions is lens flaring.  I have noticed that some cameras have more of a problem with this than others.  The newer cameras I have used typically don’t have a lot of lens flares while older ones do quite a bit if you are not vigilant about where the sun is located in relation to your lens.  Often, looking at the pictures on the LCD screen of a camera when very sunny out will make it difficult to observe the details of the pictures taken. Because of this difficulty, you may not notice the lens flaring in your photographs until you are back in your studio.  If you are submitting your pictures to sites like Shutterstock to be for sale, they may not be accepted if they have lens flaring in them. Overall, lens flaring usually makes pictures look like crap, so I highly suggest taking measures to prevent them.

Composition

When armed with a camera, it can be pretty easy to find material to take photographs of all around you. The desert can be a lot more challenging because there can be significantly less to photograph, so it is probably not a bad idea to learn about composition or at least brush up on the knowledge you have already obtained.  If you are new to composition concepts, I highly suggest learning about Gestalt design principles.  You can use these concepts to better utilize a barren landscape to your advantage and shoot some visually stimulating photographs.  I will say that I think shooting in a desert will push your knowledge of these concepts to their limits.  Practicing good composition in an extreme circumstance devoid of stimuli may help you see better compositions in a more visually overloaded environment.  I liken photographing the desert to practicing the art of the minimalist painters and sculptors from the 1960s and 1970s.  They were able to make elegant and strong compositions using just a few well-placed and calculated motions.  Think of yourself as a Georgia O’Keefe or a Donald Judd trudging around the desert looking for pure compositions that seem sacred or balanced to your mind. You’ll start to see the patterns of Gestalt all around.

Cacti

Most likely, the desert that you are in has a wide variety of cacti, and it pays off to know what the cacti are called.  For one, if you know what you are looking for, you can specifically take pictures of these cacti by themselves and try to sell these photographs as stock photos.  If you shoot a rare cactus, you may very easily win the SEO battle on stock photo websites for that rare plant because there is not a lot of competition.  If you see an interesting cactus, photograph it and try to identify it later. I use this site to research unknown cacti.

This may seem a bit obvious, but it is worth noting cacti can have very sharp spines and will stab you.  Always be cognizant of your surroundings when taking photographs.  Just like cell phones can be distracting, your attention can be compromised when looking through the lens of a camera.  In Arizona, there are a lot of Cholla cacti, or “teddy bear” cacti as I have heard some people call them.  These cacti are completely covered with inch-long spines that are as sharp as a surgical scalpel.  Cholla start small on the ground in little clumps but can grow as big as a small tree.  Throughout their entire lives, they are covered with these same giant spines.  As a photographer, you can either step on them while looking through your camera or walk backward into the larger ones.  I consider myself very careful, but on an outing last year, the side of one of my boots came in contact with a Cholla, and the spines when through the leather very easily.  Luckily I felt an uncomfortable poke in my foot and pulled away. Stepping on vegetation also can be very destructive in a desert environment.  There are quite a few species of cacti that are pretty small but are, in fact many years old, sometimes even decades old.  So please be aware of your surroundings when you are in nature.

Dirt

The bane of most photographers is dirt and dust, which the desert has a plethora of.  I highly suggest bringing a canister or two of air duster inside your backpack.  You probably will never use it, but you’ll always wish you had it when you need it most.  There are obvious scenarios where dust gets kicked up by walking or by offroad vehicles, but there is always the looming possibility that a haboob could kick up a metric ton of dust in a matter of seconds.  For the uninitiated, haboobs are fast desert winds that pop up almost without warning.  They create sandstorms that can vary from very thick to a light dusting.  Unfortunately, just a light dusting can be enough to dirty up a camera and affect image quality.  A good can of air duster will offer a touchless fix that won’t scratch your lenses or other camera parts.