Bonus Week–Two for the price of one.
Since the images in the selects for today fell into two very distinct areas I decide to do two posting for day 5. But before I get to the images I want to share a story about how I got myself into a mental funk and how that affected my image making for the whole morning.
The night before we decided that we would return to Mesquite Flats Sand Dunes for our morning shoot. I then concluded that we could sleep in a bit because the forecast was for clear skies so there would not be great color in the morning and the good light would be not be on the dunes until after the sun gets up over the mountains to the east. When we got up and out to the gas station for gas and coffee it was still dark but about 30 minute later than “normal”. So far so good.
But as we were driving to the park the most gorgeous morning twilight was occurring; everything started to take on a pink glow. The forecast was wrong. It was partly cloudy and the light was awesome. But where we were, there didn’t seem to be anything we wanted to shoot. This glow only lasted 10-15 minutes and by the time we got to some place we could shoot it was over. I started mentally kicking myself over the decision the night before to sleep in. I don’t know why , but all this really bummed me out. So much so that none of my sand dune shots from this shoot make the selects for the day. (And you saw the possibilities in yesterdays images). There are only a couple of pattern shots of cracked mud that made the day’s selects.
Make no mistake about it, part of your personality and mood are expressed in your images. If for no other reason your personality and mood affect what you choose to shoot. If you are in a bad mood then you will most likely not like what you shoot. Another thing to keep in mind is that image can be made almost any time anywhere. You just need to be open to the possibilities. I’m sure if we would have stopped we could have something to shoot and take advantage of the light.
After breakfast Bill Westerhoff, my traveling companion on this trip, suggested we drive over to the other side of the park and see if we could find a place he’d read about that had some Joshua Trees. So exploring we go.
This was the first time I’d had the opportunity to shoot Joshua Trees. From these images it might be hard to tell this but one of the things to take into account when shooting these guys is find an uncluttered composition with a clean background. Its harder than it looks.
When we finally found the area with the Joshua Trees I was certainly in a better mood but still not feeling creative. But at least I was able to make a few images that I like.
What I was seeing when I made this was the series of diagonal lines made by the slope of the hill on the bottom-left, the lean of the truck of the tree and line made by the meeting of blue sky and the white clouds. However, I think it would have been a stronger image if I had of gotten in closer to the tree and shot from a lower camera position. Both of these things would raised the horizontal part of the tree relative to the background mountains so that they wouldn’t merge like they do here.
Here is the shooting metadata for this image:
D200 with 24-70 @ 40mm
1/50 sec @ f/10 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp 0
Handheld
At some point I thought about what a great subject to shoot some teaching slides to show how the perspective is changed when the same subjects are shot with different focal lengths forces you to move closer and further away. Going though this process got me over the hump. I was finally out of my funk. Thank goodness.
Here is the shooting metadata for this image:
D200 with 12-24 @ 18mm
1/180 sec @ f/6.3 ISO 100
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp +1/3
Handheld
For the next pair of images we jump all the way to just before sunset. The rest of the day was filled with getting to and shooting at the Racetrack Playa. (Images from here will be the subject of Day 5 Part 2.) On the way into the Racetrack we noticed these Joshua Trees. I recall talking about if we knew we would see these we wouldn’t of had to drive to the far side of the park.
We were only a few days away from the full moon, meaning, that the moon would rise shortly before sunset. We stayed at the Racetrack until the sun went behind the mountains. And did make some shots with the moon rising over the Playa.
It’s a 2.5 hour drive on the worst road you can imagine and we wanted to get as far as we could while there was still some light. But we did make a short stop to shoot these Joshua Trees. I’m really glad we did.
Here is the shooting metadata for this image:
D200 with 24-70 @ 26mm
1/60 sec @ f/3.5 ISO 200
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp -1
2 stop GND, Handheld
Eleven minutes later; on the other side of the road, looking the other direction, I found a tree that I could silhouette against the colorful sky. I finally had my shot with pink light for the day.
Here is the shooting metadata for this image:
D200 with 80-200 @ 200mm
1/80 sec @ f/3.5 ISO 200
Matrix, Aperture Priority, Comp -1
Handheld (Seated on ground with camera and lens resting on knee)