High Desert Drifter

Now that I live only a little over an hour from Joshua Tree National Park, it's much easier to keep an eye on the weather and head out there only when I have a good chance of hitting the kind of conditions that I prefer.  I did hit it just right on this day last October and was was quite happy with my afternoon of shooting... the sky was absolutely perfect. (Click the image for a detailed view).  I went back a couple of weeks ago on Jan. 2 hoping for something similar, but it turned out a little too overcast and windy, so I'm not sure if anything good will come out of that session (still waiting to process a batch of film), but hoping for the best.  I like to check the Joshua Tree web cam to get an idea of the situation before deciding to make the drive, but things can change a lot in in two hours out there when weather is happening, so it's never 100% guaranteed to be perfect, even after my best efforts.
This was shot with what is probably my favorite tool recently, a panoramic 6x12 (60x120mm) roll film back on my view camera.. great because it allows me to get the benefit of the full width and detail of the camera's large format frame on roll film instead of sheets, which is much cheaper to buy and to process... and faster to use in the field than sheet film in individual holders. I'm only loosing a little bit of the frame at the top and the bottom, which is o.k. because I'm really liking the wide format these days... it seems to make almost any composition more dynamic and interesting than standard full-frame proportions.
One thing I am hoping for this year is to photograph a rare high desert snow dusting, but that will have to wait a while, because we are in a really warm pattern right now and even up here on the mountain at 6000 ft., almost all the snow is melted and gone.

SkyWatch: Winter Wonderland and Clearing Storm

I very nearly made the mistake of going out for a walk the other day without any photo gear.. the weather had just barely let up after snowing all day and it was still gray and dark when I left the house. Luckily I relented and grabbed my SLR, because 10 minutes later, the local fog had lifted and I had a few minutes to capture some spectacular light on the dissipating clouds far below.

This was shot from a forestry road that runs around the town just below our house. Someone had amazingly driven their truck up the road earlier, providing me a couple of nice tracks through the deep snow to walk on, otherwise I probably wouldn't have bothered to hike to this spot.. one of the few nearby that offers a view out through the dense trees to the lower elevations. That's the luck element, I guess.. I have gone out many days looking specifically for light and clouds that look like this, and come up empty, then this day unexpectedly, it's right there and I just had to be ready.

That is actually not the sun you see shining THROUGH the cloud, but a bright reflection ON the cloud, as the sun in this scene was way off to the left and just a few minutes from setting... the resulting touch of orange/yellow against the soft blues is really important to the scene, don't you think? A painter would know that and simply add it in; for a photographer it's a more elusive thing, but that's the fun and the challenge of landscape photography.

Check out the SkyWatch homepage every weekend for more great sky images from all around the world.

Thorn Bush and Fresh Snow

Six inches of fresh snow on Sunday night/Monday morning produced some beautiful winter scenery here on Mt. San Jacinto... at least for a short time.  Around here, it usually doesn't take too long for the snow on the trees to start melting and falling off, so optimal shooting time can be kind of brief after the actual storm clears out...  Huge clumps of snow falling from the trees onto your head, down your neck and all over your camera makes for messy working conditions:)
While walking in the national forest just below our house, the abstraction and contrast of this sharp, thorny bush against the soft fresh-fallen powder caught my eye.

Going with the Flow

Last week was 6 straight days of pouring rain here in the mountains of southern California ...a grand total of 11" from Thursday through Wednesday. Although I like snow, I'm kind of glad that this storm was a warm one and we missed out on the white stuff (at least at this elevation)... otherwise it would have been a truly epic snow storm and would have made life pretty difficult around here for a while.
All that rain (and snow on the high peaks) is now flowing down the mountain and making for some really pretty and refreshing scenes along the rivers and creeks that were showing barely a trickle just a couple of weeks ago. It's really fun to explore up here with waterfall after waterfall....  the roar of the water acts like white noise, blocking out the rest of the world so you can really concentrate on your work... you just have to remember to think about where your feet are too, while standing on a rock in the middle of a rushing stream:) You can click for a larger view on this one.
I'm planning to be out in Joshua Tree before the end of this week... (actually I have several more nice ones from my last session out there in October that I haven't even shown yet).  The weather is ever-unpredictable around these parts in the winter, so you really do have to "go with the flow" and be willing to change your plans.