Ibex Sands Baby Onesie

Ibex Dunes is one destination that you really have to have a desire to reach. The dunes are hidden from normally traveled roads by rocky desert hills. Drive south on the eastern side of Death Valley National Park through the town of Shoshone and find the turn to the west that takes you about six miles along dirt and rock roads to be abeam the dunes in the distance. Then, the trek requires a hike across two miles of desert floor, much of it hard pack, complete with many mesquite bushes, purportedly providing homes to a number of sidewinders that frequent the area. One of the nice benefits with Ibex Dunes is that there were no footprints in the sand, as with the millions of prints in Mesquite Flat Dunes that is far more accessible in the Park.
The fun part was that my two friends and fellow photographers and I had decided to hike into the dunes around 3 PM so that we could get a ringside seat for the sun casting shadows, as it sunk below the horizon, on the western side of the...

Don Mercer is an author and freelance fine art photographer. Research for one book took him to the middle of Cambodia in 1999, as he was the first from among his wartime unit to return to that country. During the War in Southeast Asia - known to most as the Vietnam War, he flew over two hundred combat missions as an Air Force pilot in the Cessna O-2A. His combat assignment was as a Forward Air Controller, or FAC. The majority of his combat missions were flown in Cambodia at night. While in Southeast Asia in 1970-71, his interest in photography intensified with the purchase of his first two of numerous Nikon cameras. Black and white, as well as color, 35mm, and Super 8 movie films were used at the time. The transition to digital...