Nevada's Valley of Fire

Ask one hundred people to recall anything about Nevada and chances are 99% of them will immediately say Las Vegas. Sad, really, because Nevada is an incredibly diverse state, especially for we landscape photographers.

I am in Nevada right now and just spent two glorious, if miserably hot, days in Nevada’s Valley of Fire State Park. What a magnificent place! This was my second visit to the park and I have to say that it was far more pleasurable being there in November than it has been this week. Daytime temps hit 105 on both days, so hiking with a 30-pound camera backpack was a trial by fire (sorry, bad pun!). In fact, I ended up with a headache after Day Two because I just could not keep up with my water requirement.

Valley of Fire has been the site of several movies, and with good cause. It’s desert ecology and multi-colored rocks give the impression of either the old West (think John Ford) or, perhaps, an alien landscape (a scene from StarTrek was filmed here). A landscape photographer could spend weeks here just recording the bizarre and colorful rock formations.

I hope to come back here, since I was not able to capture several scenes that were on my shot list due to bad weather conditions. I’ll make sure not to return in summer, though!