Ubehebe #1
Death Valley National Park, California
2017
Early one morning, I spent a couple of hours hiking the rim of the Ubehebe Crater in the northern part of Death Valley. I only walked about two miles total but the mostly dark volcanic ground combined with various contrasting plants and soils, aided with the long shadows from the low morning sun, made for some great photography. It seems like I often only walked a few steps before I saw something else worthy of pointing my camera at. That slowed my progress on the hike considerably.
This particular image shows the interior slope of the 600′ deep crater where it meets the flat, dried crater floor. The very light color of the crater floor was, I presume, alkaline material left on the ground after rainwater runoff collected there and then evaporated.