Dune Buggies in Huacachina

A dune buggy crosses the Huacachina desert near the Mirador de las Dunas de Huacachina in Ica, Peru. I took this photo late in the afternoon, when the low sun started pulling long shadows across the sand and gave the whole scene a warm, dusty glow.

What I liked most was the scale. The buggy is small in the frame, but that is exactly the point. It gives some context to how big these dunes really feel when you are standing on them. From this higher ridge above the oasis side of Huacachina, I could look out over layer after layer of soft curves, with the city spread out in the distance and the mountains fading into the haze behind it. The desert looks almost clean and quiet from up there, even though these rides are fast, noisy, and a little chaotic once you are in one.

I waited for a moment when a single vehicle entered the lower right part of the scene. That placement helped balance the empty foreground and kept the photo from feeling too flat. The lines in the sand were also important to me. The wind had left a lot of fine texture on the nearest slope, and the angled light made those patterns stand out without making the frame feel too busy. Farther back, the darker shaded faces of the dunes added some contrast and helped separate one ridge from the next.

I shot this on my iPhone X, and the wide view worked well for a landscape like this. I wanted to keep both the buggy and the repeating shapes of the desert in the same frame, instead of isolating one detail. For me, that is what Huacachina felt like: part playground, part quiet desert, and much bigger than it first seems from town.