West Texas Dust Devils

West Texas is an amazing location in spring, summer and fall for dust devils! This unique weather phenomenon can result in some spectacular photography opportunities. I was heading down to Big Bend National Park to guide a couple of anesthesiologists from Dallas. They were interested in birds and landscape photography. We had some nice birds right off the bat in Green Gulch and then headed into the Chisos Basin. After a Greater Roadrunner that posed nicely allowing Scott a chance to photograph it, we then made our way to the basin restaurant. After a wonderful dinner, we hiked to a spot off the Window Pour-Off Trail and set up for some God rays and the sunset in the window. While I got some nice images that evening, I had some excitement on the way down the road to the park earlier in the day.

South of Marathon, I came upon what started as two dust devils (see image below) and then became one very large dust devil. The sky was washed out due to mid-day light and to highlight the column of the dust devils I opted to apply some basic processing in Lightroom CC and then go into my favorite plug-in for Black and White Photography post-processing, Silver Effex Pro.