The rule
An image showing a real place, person, or species is either a genuine photograph or it states plainly that it is not. Nothing here is allowed to imply it is evidence when it is illustration.

Sources matter
This place has an unusual history and no photographic record of the moment that created it. That makes it especially important to be clear about which images are real.
An image showing a real place, person, or species is either a genuine photograph or it states plainly that it is not. Nothing here is allowed to imply it is evidence when it is illustration.
The three images there, the 1928 hot-water strike, the abandoned rig, and the early-1990s facility work, are generated historical interpretation and each is captioned as such. If a documentary photograph of the 1928 accident surfaces, it replaces the interpretation immediately.
What remains of the original drilling equipment still sits roughly a hundred yards west of the well. That is a physical object anyone can go and look at, so it deserves a real photograph rather than a rendering, and getting one is on the list.
The tubs, the campground, and the dune areas are specific and recognisable. Where documentary or official imagery exists for them it is what gets used. Generic desert stock standing in for this desert is not acceptable.
The riding-page terrain photograph was made in 2015 by Adam Milnor for the Bureau of Land Management. It is a public-domain work of the United States government. The original is preserved, and the web copy was resized and compressed without changing the scene. Source: Wikimedia Commons file Hot Well Dunes Recreation Area (53707583971).
Frames from videos shared with us inform fact-checking and art direction. They are not published without the permission of whoever shot them.
Source, creator, licence, and any modification are recorded before an image ships, and where a file was resized for the web the untouched original is kept.
If you hold rights to an image used here, or something is credited wrongly, write to michael@duneguideusa.com and it gets fixed or removed.
Verify before travel. Conditions, zones, and regulations can change. Use the responsible agency's current information for final decisions.
Open the official BLM source →