Recently, after being on a film shoot in California, I had a couple of days spare at the end of my trip and decided to capture some images in Death Valley.  I made the classic tourist error of hiring a convertible car, which in the desert, is a bad idea.  You want, no, you need to have air conditioning.  Being stoic, I chose discomfort and sunburn instead, which turned out well for me.

Anyhow, here are a few shots I took in a day long photography shoot in Death Valley.  It effectively documents the arrival of a fierce thunder-storm, gale force winds and a torrential downpour that flooded the roads in multiple places.

The fluffy white clouds formed the perfect backdrop to this ghost town

Thick, heavy cloud was blowing into Death Valley from Nevada to the east.

The sky seemed to lose colour as the heavy, grey clouds gathered overheat, blocking out the intense sun and dropping the temperature some 20 degrees Celsius.

Rain began to fall and there were two separate rainbows in the desert.  It was magnificent.

For these last two images, the wind was blowing a gale and I had to cling on to my camera gear to fear that it would be snatched away by the wind.

Forks of lightening spread 180 degrees sideways through the sky as I drove back to my hotel after taking the final session of shots on Zabriskie Point.