White Sands Light
White light refracted by the White Sands shatters into the full spectrum of visible color.
Aristotle believed that all color was derived from black and white, light and darkness. In 1666 Sir Isaac Newton purchased his first prism and began a series of experiments culminating in the crucial observation that white light was composed of all colors. He passed a beam of light through the first prism resulting in a continuous rainbow of hues, and then a second prism remixed these disparate rays back to a uniform white. Newton then chose the mystical number seven for his polychromatic vision – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.
And when we see the arc of colors appearing in the heavens as sunbeams are split by raindrops – our hearts skip a beat, we stop to gaze and wonder, perhaps dream of love and magic, or chuckle about a pot of gold at the end of the world. So the spectrum of color deeply affects us.
In White Sands National Monument, Alamogordo, New Mexico, we experienced the profound impact of light and color on human emotion and the psyche. “Colour are light’s suffering and joy,” declaimed Goethe.
We drove down to the dune field in May 2019 anticipating a special experience. Albert brought his S (Typ007) and used his Vario-Elmar-S 30–90 mm f/3.5–5.6 ASPH, Summicron-S 100 mm f/2 ASPH and APO-Macro-Summarit-S 120 mm f/2.5 lenses along with a RRS TVC-34L Mk2 tripod and a BH-55 ball-head. Ruth had just received her new Q2 and gave it a spin. The Q2 performed well in low light allowing her to push ISO easily to 3200 for handheld photos. The fact that the Q2 is weather-sealed gave her peace of mind in the blowing sand.
These dunes are like none other because they are not sand but the mineral gypsum. During the Permian period, this area was covered by shallow seas that left behind beds of calcium sulfate (gypsum). Tectonic shifts lifted this ancient seabed to create the San Andreas and Sacramento Mountains. Subsequent rainfall dissolved the gypsum and trapped it in the basin with no outlet. Weathering and erosion broke up the crystals into fine sand-like grains that prevailing southwesterly winds then shaped into dunes. The crystals rubbed against one another scratching their surfaces thus allowing them to reflect light. The dunes are ever changing, their shape and position always shifting.
Light hitting the white gypsum from different angles and on the varying dune surfaces produces an infinite array of luminous and somber hues. Bursting forth from night, first light gleams golden, the human figure diminutive in the vast universe of heaven and earth.
Moments later as day awakens rosy-fingered dawn adorns the sky with a more subtle pink suffusing the sands and surrounding peaks with a soft glow intensifying to a gleaming fuchsia. Foliage and flowers on plants like squaw bush sumac, soap tree yucca and prairie grasses become the subjects of desert portraits. As the sun climbs higher overhead burning directly down on the dunes, light becomes brighter and whiter, but the sands underfoot remain cool. Unlike the quartz-based sand of other dune fields, these calcium sulfate surfaces do not readily convert the sun’s energy; they are soft and welcoming even to bare feet. Hours pass, a windstorm kicks up and the dunes morph before our eyes, burying lost objects, submerging signposts and obscuring the road. By days end the sun is sinking close to the horizon and light is refracted anew.
The firmament is ablaze in resplendent red and fiery orange until the rotation of the planet causes darkness to fall. White light recedes. Color dissolves.
Sunset, White Sands, Alamogordo, New Mexico. Leica S (Typ 007) & Vario-Elmar-S 30–90 mm f/3.5–5.6 Asph. at 37mm, f/13, 1/2000 sec, ISO 400.