Shooting the Red Dunes of Wadi Rum

I saw my first picture of Wadi Rum when I was a high school intern at Alpinist, a mountaineering magazine with an office above a small Mexican restaurant near downtown Jackson. I sat at my desk, mystified by the image of a sand-filled valley in southern Jordan: it was dotted with towering sandstone spires and isolated camps of Bedouin who herded camels across the desolate moonscape. Staring out the office window, as heavy snow blanketed the mountains outside, the endless red sand dunes were about as opposite a landscape as I could possibly imagine. It epitomized the allure of travel but resided in my mind as a place I would probably only see in the pages of a magazine.