Death Valley Photography Guide: Locations, Film & Safety

I make the drive to Death Valley about once a year, almost always in winter. It's roughly seven hours from my home in north Phoenix, and I've made it enough times that the famous overlooks are already on film. That changes how I use a trip. Most of my Death Valley photography now happens away from the parking lots, in places I haven't seen yet.

The park makes that easy. It's big enough that there is always something new: a side road, a canyon I drove past for years, a mud flat that cracked differently after the last flood. What came back from those trips is in my Death Valley photography prints.

This guide covers when to go, which film works in which light, the locations I've photographed and what I'd do at each, and the backcountry precautions I take because sharp rock has cut tires on my own trips. I shoot both digital and 4x5 large format film here, and every print in this post was made on 4x5 film.

Planning a Death Valley Photography Trip

Getting There

• From Phoenix: about 7 hours, through Las Vegas
• From Las Vegas: 120 miles (2 hours) via Highways 160 and 190
• From Los Angeles: 275 miles (4.5 hours) via Highway 395 or I-15
• From Lone Pine on Highway 395: 100 miles (2 hours) via Highway 190
• From Beatty, Nevada: 8 miles to the park boundary on Daylight Pass Road

Park Fees and Hours (2026)

• Entry fee: $30 per vehicle for 7 days, or the America the Beautiful annual pass
• Hours: open 24 hours, year-round
• Visitor center: Furnace Creek, seasonal hours
• Commercial photography: permit required

Fees and hours change, so check the park's website before you go.

Where to Stay

For the last few years I've camped. It keeps the cost of a week of sunrise starts down. Furnace Creek and Stovepipe Wells both have campgrounds, and winter weekends fill up, so reserve where you can. If you want a bed, the options inside the park are The Inn and The Ranch at Furnace Creek, Stovepipe Wells Village, and Panamint Springs on the west side.

Best Time for Death Valley Photography

Winter. I live in Phoenix, so I get all the summer heat I want at home, and I want no part of it in Death Valley. Summer on the valley floor regularly passes 120°F. That's not a photography problem, it's a survival problem.

November through February gives you cool mornings and a low sun that rakes across the salt and the mud. The catch is the sky. Most winter mornings are clear, which means good light with nothing up there to catch it. The images with color in the clouds came from the few mornings a storm was moving through, and you can't plan those. You can only be there.

Spring works too, early on. Three of my salt flat prints, Badwater, Cottonball Basin and Salt Flat Sunrise, were made in spring.

Wind

Heat isn't the only thing that can shut you down. The wind in Death Valley can be a major problem, and the wide open areas do nothing to calm it. There are days when the salt flats and the dunes are simply unshootable with a view camera on a tripod. When that happens, I head for a canyon, where the walls take most of it.

Matching Film to the Light in Death Valley

Film choice shapes my whole day here.

Fujichrome Velvia 50 only works at sunrise and sunset in Death Valley. Provia 100F is the same. Once the sun is up, the light on white salt and pale badlands is too hard for either one.

Kodak E100 gives me a bit more room on the daylight side, so it's what I load when the best light is fading but the scene still works.

Black and white is what keeps me working through the middle of the day. Depending on the location, Kodak T-Max 100 can be shot from morning into the afternoon. My cracked mud studies are all black and white, made in light that would be useless on Velvia.

Midday in the Canyons

When the sun is high, I go into the canyons. Inside the narrows the light bounces off the walls instead of coming straight down, and every film stock works again, color included. Grotto Canyon, off Highway 190 east of Stovepipe Wells, is one of them.

Death Valley Photography Locations

I've photographed most of the well-known locations over the years, and I've shot them enough that I'm not missing anything by skipping them now. That leaves each trip free for new ground. Here's what I'd tell you about the places I know.

Badwater Basin and the Salt Flats

Badwater is the lowest point in North America, 282 feet below sea level. Most of the year it's dry, hard white salt crusted into polygons. Walk well past the first stretch, which is trampled flat by everyone who stops at the sign, and the patterns are intact. The salt is corrosive, so rinse your tripod legs when you're done.

Badwater doesn't flood very often. It takes a lot of recent rain to put water on the flats, and it has to still be there with no wind at sunrise or sunset to give you a reflection of the mountains. That's what I found the morning I made Badwater Sunrise Reflection on Velvia 50. Don't count on it. Most years there's no water at all.

The salt flats need a sky. Salt Flat Sunrise only works because there were clouds over the basin that morning.

Cottonball Basin

The name is accurate. Rounded white salt formations push up through the crust in clusters, some the size of a softball, some much bigger. Far fewer people walk out here than at Badwater. Cottonball Basin Sunrise was made early on a spring morning on Provia 100F.

The Cracked Mud Flats

Flash floods come through Death Valley harder than you'd expect. Water rushes out of the canyons, spreads across the flood plain and leaves a coat of fine sediment. Then the sun dries it until it cracks into polygons. Fractured Earth came from the flats between Furnace Creek and the Black Mountains.

This is black and white work. In winter morning light the cracks cast shadows into themselves. For Fractured Earth I used T-Max 100 with a polarizer and a yellow filter on the Arca-Swiss. Cracked Earth was a winter afternoon with the Tachihara.

Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie gets crowded at sunrise because everyone knows the light is good there. Get up early enough and you beat most of them. Zabriskie Point Sunrise was a winter sunrise on Velvia 50 with the Tachihara.

I also have a black and white panorama from here. Between the two, I've covered Zabriskie, and it's one of the places I drive past now.

Dantes View

At 5,476 feet, Dantes View looks straight down on Badwater and across the basin to the Panamint Range. It's noticeably cooler on top than on the valley floor. Sunrise is the time: the light comes over your shoulder and lands on the Panamints first.

Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes

The dunes near Stovepipe Wells are the easiest dunes in the park to reach, and the first ones from the parking area are covered in footprints. Walk further out for clean ripples. Go early or late, when low light picks out the ridges. This is also where wind hurts most. My frames from Mesquite are fine for this post, but none is a print I'd sell. The dune print I do sell, Dune Light, came from a more remote dune field near Panamint Valley.

Racetrack Playa

The Racetrack is famous for its sailing stones, rocks that slide across the dry lakebed and leave trails behind them. It took me more than one trip to photograph them.

The first time, I underestimated the drive. The road in from Ubehebe Crater is about 27 miles of rough dirt, and back then the washboard was very deep. It took a couple of hours longer than I had planned, and I missed sunset.

The next time I left much earlier and got a flat right at Teakettle Junction, about 20 miles in. There was still time to change the tire and make it for the light. The problem was the car. It was a rental, the spare was held on with a locking nut, and the rental company hadn't included the key. Luckily I was traveling with a second vehicle, so we all loaded into it and made our way back to Furnace Creek. We called the rental company, and they sent people out to drop off a new car for me and then go pick up theirs. I'm sure they didn't enjoy that. If I'd had the key, I would have swapped the tire and none of it would have needed to happen.

If you're driving a rental, check the rental policy before you take it on a road like this. I think I got lucky on that one, even if the missing key was their fail. Take a high-clearance vehicle and read the safety section below before you go.

I finally got the stones on a third trip, a year after the flat, and that time I went solo. Those photographs are from 2002, made on a 6 megapixel digital camera. The one below ran as The Last Frame, the image that closes each issue of Outdoor Photographer, in June 2008. It held up in a magazine and it holds up on a web page. It doesn't hold up as a large print at today's standards, which is why you won't find it in the print catalog.

Off the Main Roads

A lot of what I've photographed in Death Valley isn't on any list of top spots. Barrel cactus beside Daylight Pass Road near Boundary Canyon, under storm clouds. The old borax wagons at Harmony Borax Works, which are good detail subjects in the middle of the day. Devils Golf Course at sunset. Aguereberry Point, looking down over the valley with snow on the rocks. Artists Palette, too, though I've never had an image from there I'd print.

Just outside the park, past Beatty, the ghost town of Rhyolite is worth a stop. I photographed it in heavy fog, which suited the ruins of the Cook Bank building.

Death Valley Backcountry Safety

The roads in Death Valley are remote, and they can be dangerous. A breakdown that's an annoyance near Furnace Creek can be serious 30 miles down a dirt road.

• Tires: the rock here is sharp, and it has cut tires on my trips. I always carry a good spare and a tire plug kit.
• Rental cars: before you leave the lot, make sure the spare can actually come off. If it's held by a locking nut, get the key. Read the rental policy on dirt roads too.
• Communication: cell service disappears fast. A satellite-capable phone or a Garmin-type messenger is a smart investment before you go far off the main areas.
• Breakdowns: if your car quits, stay with it. A vehicle is far easier for searchers to find than a person on foot, and it's your shade.
• Flash floods: if you camp like I do, never set up in a wash or on low ground. Rain miles away can send water down a dry wash with no warning.
• Water: at least a gallon per person per day, more if you're hiking, even in winter.
• Fuel: fill up whenever you can. Distances between gas stations are long.
• Your plan: tell someone outside the park where you're going and when you'll be back.
• Film: never leave it in a parked car in the sun. Keep it in a cooler, off the ice.

Everything I've printed from the park is in my gallery of Death Valley National Park photography prints. One trip nearly ended with me packing up and driving back to Las Vegas, and I wrote about why I stayed in Patience in Landscape Photography. For the cameras and lenses behind these images, see my large format field kit.