In June 2023 I embarked on a 5 day solo trip to Badlands National Park in South Dakota with the objective of photographing a landscape completely different from the Northwoods forests that comprise a majority of my work.

Badlands National Park is one of the lesser visited national parks and offers stunning geologic features, buttes and grasslands that I hoped would be both challenging and rewarding for both photography and immersion in natural beauty.

Day 1 - No Snooze Button
My preferred plan of action is to get on the road as early as possible to maximize time on location and minimize disruptions from traffic, particularly when leaving my home in the Twin Cities. To this goal I had packed my gear in the car the previous day and only needed to roll out of bed at my 2am alarm, pop contact lenses in and hit the road.

I’m beginning to think the early wakeups may be the reason it's difficult to convince others to join me on these trips.

Google maps estimated about 7.5 hours on the road so with stops I called it 9 and aimed to be in Badlands National Park by a late lunch. What I forgot was that I would gain an entire hour due to the time change to Mountain Time and without my energetic two year old in the backseat, I’d only need to stop for fuel and a break once. All this resulted in arriving in the park before 10:30 local time - well before I was able to check into my campsite.

Badlands National Park has two campgrounds within the park boundaries, Cedar Pass Campground, near the park visitor center and the Sage Creek Campground which offers sites on a first-come-first-serve basis in the more remote western end of the north unit. I had reserved a spot in at Cedar Pass and hoped that going with a simple car-camp would help me get on location for sunrise/sunset with ease.

I set out immediately to test the fading morning light - but with conditions fading I mostly just secured a great view for a late morning cup of coffee.

I used the remainder of the morning and early afternoon hours to drive the length of the main park road to begin putting together a shooting plan for the next few days.

Making a shooting plan is a great way to maximize productivity while on location but plans rarely survive unchanged when in the field.

In the late afternoon I hiked a portion of the Castle Trail from the Big Badlands Overlook parking area as many of the overlooks during this time were fairly crowded (a common theme). Despite rising temperatures the mix of grasslands and palisades was a welcome respite from my many hours in the car.

In the evening I settled into a location I found earlier in the day and captured images as the shadows grew and light faded. I enjoyed the beauty and natural color of the rock formations in this location, but ended up frustrated by my ability to compose the scene - the speed at which the light changes during sunsets can make the experience exhilarating or challenging depending on how the image turns out.

Day 2 - The Challenge:

If you want a visualization for how crooked you hold your camera - go to the Badlands. Endless geologic features with perfectly horizontal stripes amplify any lean in my framing.

Day two was encompassed by harsh direct lighting conditions under a cloudless sky. I woke up before sunrise and started the day working washed out areas in the flats under the lower buttes.

I was especially taken by the subtle features left in the ground by water runoff and spent a good amount of time working to capture these both by themselves and as part of a larger scene. The textures presented in an 4x4ft area resembled a high level topographic map.

Further exploration of overlooks that were crowded from the previous day followed. While I wouldn’t say the presence of other people is unbearable, I certainly enjoy the opportunity to experience a spectacular landscape or location in solitude and do find that I’m able to understand the landscape as it pertains to framing and composition for a photograph more quickly when I’m on location by myself.

I finished the morning with a stop at a field full of prairie dog burrows, and while none of my images will be appearing in National Geographic anytime soon - I enjoyed observing several families with pups coming and going from their subterranean homes.

I rounded out the day by driving up to the Sage Creek Wilderness Area, past the resident herd of bison - and hiking down into the grassland for some more solitude which also helped to feel the vastness of this area of badlands and as an added bonus came across a group of sheep on the drive back to my campsite, which while not a rare occurrence in this park, was an exciting wildlife encounter!

Day 3 - Adjusting:

After 2 days of harsh lighting and cloudless skies - and a third on the way, I decided to roll the dice and travel 2 hours further west to see if there would be favorable shooting conditions in Wyoming - not to mention that the relentless sunlight was getting to me just a bit.

In short - this was the right call.

Devils Tower National Monument has been on my list of travel locations for quite awhile and while admittedly that travel list is quite long America’s first national monument was near the top. At only 2.5 hours west of Badlands National Park - the opportunity to add a new state to my visit list was too tempting to pass up. After shooting another sunrise in Badlands National Park I canceled my campsite for the night and set out for Devils Tower.

The national monument is centered around the 867 foot rock formation rising out of the rolling hills of northeastern Wyoming - and while I’ve heard reviews calling it ‘just a rock’ - such a striking geologic feature is just the sort of thing that I’d drive 3 hours out of my way to experience. The tower is visible from the road at about 10 minutes from the park and is striking in its contrast to the surrounding landscapes and approaching it more closely reveals its composition of hundreds of vertical stone columns - it's no wonder why many native people consider the location to be sacred and President Theodore Roosevelt used the first designation of ‘national monument’ to ensure its preservation.

From a photographic perspective its a bit unique to travel to a location and rather than looking for ‘subjects’ to photograph, the subject is fairly well established already and the focus becomes how to frame it in such a way that communicates its’ beauty and dominance of the landscape to the viewer of the image.

I spent a spectacular evening creating images with the aid of some dramatic clouds - the highlight of the evening was to have the entire area of the park where I set up my tripod to myself as a thunderstorm passed several miles to the north shaking the ground with thunder while I had the privilege of creating images in America’s first national monument in solitude.

Day 4 Wrapping Up:

I woke up early at Devils Tower and started back to Badlands National Park. No trip to South Dakota is complete without a stop at Wall Drug, which happens to be just beyond the north entrance to the park. The undisputed tourist trap capital of South Dakota if the Mitchell Corn Palace didn’t exist, Wall Drug has surprisingly fresh donuts which were a welcome break from freeze dried meals - it's worth the stop.

Back in the badlands I spent my last evening dodging thundershowers and captured my favorite image of the trip of the moon rising above a lone butte in the grasslands.

The following day I woke early and returned to the Twin Cities, tired but excited to begin editing photos after a whirlwind of Badlands National Park landscape photography.

Trip Overview: Badlands National Park Landscape Photography 2023

The Image: Hoofprints in the Amphitheater