The National Park service gives this explanation: The Lakota people were the first to call this place “mako sica” or “land bad.” Extreme temperatures, lack of water, and the exposed rugged terrain led to this name. In the early 1900’s, French-Canadian fur trappers called it “les mauvais terres pour traverse,” or “bad lands to travel through.”

I have no problem imagining the effort needed trying to do anything on a consistent level in this land of extremes, name your subject! This certainly includes photography. Simply to walk (more likely hike) into any area of the park is intimating if not overwhelming. steep cliffs and erosion are not much of a combination for travel. The weather can be even worse. Just viewing the terrain on a map or an overlook gives pause and a deep breath.

“What better way to show all this than to immerse myself in it” was my statement as I headed down the trail looking to “tell the tale” of the badlands. The darkness of predawn was stimulating. When you can’t quite see detail the shapes become startling and engrossing. I stopped many times since I had not scouted any of this area and had an open mind about what I might find and then, do. Usually this is not the way I work however I enjoy the freedom at times of not preconceiving an image. I know from experience no matter what I may find, even if I’ve photographed an area dozens of times, it comes down to what I see at that particular moment and how I feel about it that will dictate what I do with the light and landscape presented me.

The first image to make was the sunrise. Anytime when I shoot into a rising or setting sun I choose a composition that will limit the sun itself to as small a portion of the image as possible. I try to take an angle also that will highlight the landscape and in sidelight. Of course in this image you can see that all this strategy went out the window. With pun intended it was in the window that the sun presented itself giving me a chance at somewhat muted light. I knew that at some point during the dozens of frames I made of this setup that I would overexpose parts of the image. When shooting in rapidly changing light I only stop long enough to occasionally check the histogram. I want as many frames a humanly possible as to have as many choices as possible later. As the difficulty of the situation goes up photographically, the success rate falls.

The solution, well partial anyway, was the use of a reverse neutral density filter. Reverse means the darkest part of the filter is where the gradient starts instead of the reverse where a normal graduated filter has the most effect at the top and diminishes as it gets closer to full opacity.

Since I had no consideration as to light I might need to polarize, looking straight into the coming sunrise, I did realize that I wanted to take advantage of the burst of color in the sky and the monotone that would be rendered without direct light in the foreground. A color intensifier was a easy call here. The last element was the hardest, that being the lens flare that was certain to be in most frames. The solution that I used was partially successful and gives me a chuckle. For years I witnessed a lot of photographers with some very creative ways of approaching this problem. On workshops I’ve been fond of telling participants “that’s what I brought you out here for” as I asked a willing subject to step a few feet out in front of my setup and hold a hat or any handy object. It works at times and I’m more than happy to return the favor which seems to work also. Well ……. mostly.

If a believer in the right tool for the job and recently since I invested in a new photo backpack from Lowepro that includes a pouch for a laptop computer this has become my favorite solution for lens flare! I don’t take a laptop computer with me in the field. I don’t take it anywhere really except where it is right now, that is, on my lap. So it is always empty.  However Lowepro has made this wonderful soft but firm cover that is light and slips into the front of my photo backpack. Since I always use the feature of mirror lockup to insure against camera body shake in combination with the 2 second delay in firing the shutter with all my Canon bodies, all that was necessary was to press the shutter and simply step out in front and align the cover so the direct light did not strike the lens. Now imagine me doing this back and forth looking into the lens dozens of times as the sun rose.

On second though ……….. don’t!