Contrary to its popular image, only a small portion of Death Valley is sand. Most of it is rock and salt. The Mesquite Flat dunes, just outside Stovepipe Wells, are both an exception and a popular attraction, particularly at sunrise and sunset. It is difficult to photograph them without including other photographers and their footprints. My solution was to shoot them from a distance, and let my composition tell the story. I make the image whole, instead of fragmented, by anchoring my image with a dune on the bottom and letting the flow of its shadow echo the shadow of the dunes behind it. Three shadowed bands in this image tie it together as a series of layers. These bands, and the dunes they define, get progressively smaller as they flow back into the depths of the image. The tiny clusters of people who walk these dunes at their crests lend scale to the scene. I take out all evidence of sky – and instead fill the background with the base of the Amargosa Mountains. The entire scene now becomes an expressively unified series of sand dunes, rather than a fragmented description.