Photographs from the Great Basin Desert in California

The Great Basin Desert is the largest desert in North America. Most of the desert lies within Nevada and Utah, but enters California only along the state’s eastern border. This gallery mostly consists of photographs from three trips in 2024. These trips were to the Ancient Bristlecone Forest in the White Mountains, the Panamint Range in Death Valley National Park, and Alabama Hills in the Eastern Sierra Nevada.

The images titled “Sculpted by Scarcity” are detailed images of the wood from the Great Basin Bristlecones Pines. This series explores how these ancient trees grow in nutrient-poor and alkaline soil where very few species can survive. In response to these harsh conditions they only produce small amounts of new growth each year, but that wood is dense, resinous, and pest-resistant. They have been sculpted for thousands of years by scarcity of resources and adverse conditions. The trees shown in these images can easily be 3,000 to 4,000 years old.

Updated: 12/09/2024