Coming down from the highest parts of Eureka Dunes, located in a remote corner of Death Valley National Park, the last light of the day made a halo around the scrub brush in the sand. I positioned my tripod, and shot a manually bracketed sequence, with the idea of showing the contrast between the delicacy of the branches in the failing light and the fixed but grainy field of the surface of the sand dunes.

Exposure data: 95mm, five exposures at shutter speeds from 1/100 of a second to 1/400 of a second, each exposure at f/13 and ISO 200, tripod mounted; exposures processed and combined in Adobe Camera RAW, Nik HDR Efex Pro, and Photoshop; converted to black & white using Photoshop and Nik Silver Efex.