Photo of The Day by Abe Blair

The southwest is baking in the grips of a heatwave and on June 30 the temperature in Death Valley hit 129 degrees which, it seems difficult to believe, merely TIED the June record. The park has seen in influx of visitors wanting to be there for these record-setting–or record tying– days. With news stories about the extreme heat in Death Valley in the back of my mind, I came across this photo by Abe Blair. Blair submitted this image of Badwater in Death Valley to the Your Favorite Places gallery. When I saw it I was immediately reminded of a scene in Lawrence Of Arabia when a lone man who has fallen off his camel is walking across “The Sun’s Anvil” trying to beat the rising sun across this furnace of a desert. In fact Blair’s photo was taken at sunset and in the winter, but when you’re enduring heat like we’re having at Outdoor Photographer’s Southern California offices, your mind can be forgiven for going through some tangential thought processes.

To make this photograph in the waning light and to give the clouds some motion blur, Blair set his camera for an extremely long exposure–nearly 5 minutes. He used a Nikon D800, Nikon 17-35mm f2.8 lens, Tiffen Vari-ND filter and a Lee Grad ND filter. 

I select a Photo Of The Day every day. I choose the images from the various OP galleries including Assignments, Your Favorite Places and all of the OP Contests. Also, for each issue of the magazine I go through the Assignments galleries and choose a few to be featured in The Best Of Assignments in print and I select a weekly winner to be featured on the OP home page. To get your photos into the running all you have to do is submit them.