There are many reasons why shooting landscape photography in Death Valley is so challenging. Of course, one has to deal with the sun, the wind and the sand. 

The trickiest part to me was those bright blue skies. I haven't seen a single cloud in over a week there, and since there's nothing more boring than a blue sky, I needed to find a different backdrop for my images. Shooting at 200mm helped me focus on the dunes with the purple mountain in the background.