Black Rock Desert
I stopped by the Black Rock Desert and spent a night camped out on the Playa on my road trip back up to Seattle.
Here’s the van parked out on the playa just a few minutes after sunrise. This was shot on the same roll of Portra 160 VC that I used to shoot the Joshua Tree photos in the last post. Both sunrise and sunset out on the playa were gorgeous - it’s such an beautiful and interesting environment. There was a high wind advisory for the area and a steady 15-20mi wind was blowing all through the night and into the morning. I ended up sleeping in the backseat with the top down since the wind gusts during the night had me worrying about how much the pop top could handle. It seemed sturdy but I didn’t want to risk it, since it’s basically a sail on top of the van when its up.
I was the only person out on the playa, and only person I saw on most of the drive to/from the area as well, which I enjoyed. In the morning just after sunrise, I saw two deer walking across the playa maybe a quarter-mile away. I wonder where they were going - maybe to one of the hot springs on the other side?
I was hoping to spot some stars during the night but the visibility wasn’t great. There were breaks in the clouds, but there must’ve been too much dust and stuff in the air since the stars weren’t overly bright. I’ve seen brighter night skies out in CO and on the Olympic peninsula.
These were taken with a Fujifilm Instax Wide. I picked it up just before the trip and really like the photos it takes. The wide format lends itself to some really nice framing and is big enough for my eyes to actually make out whats in the image, unlike the Instax Mini which I think is annoyingly small and hard to see. The colors and automatic exposure also seemed to hold up really well with varying lighting conditions, which I was pleasantly surprised about. Earlier in the trip, I had tried to take a few photos in the evening in what looked like decent-enough lighting where basically nothing turned out, so I was worried it could only work with full daylight, but outdoor twilight seemed fine out on the playa at least.
The van and playa sure are photogenic. They look good together :P