I spend a lot of time in California every year during my photo cycles. There's so much to see and so many interesting places to photograph. I am deeply saddened to see news of the massive fires consuming Napa and Sonoma counties right now. I was there, in Santa Rosa, early in my trip. I went to the local WalMart to find a good internet connection in the McDonalds near the entrance. Think I even spent the night there if I remember correctly. I'll have to check my notes to verify that statement. Nice town in the wine country. So many homes/businesses lost and so many lives disrupted. I took some very nice images on the coast ... one appears earlier in this blog. I'm not sure what my schedule looks like this coming cycle but I may be back there again. I didn't finish my trip up the coast and I do want to do that sometime. But it looks like I'll be leaving Crimea early this time, maybe before the holiday season in November, as my asthma is getting really bad already. In that case I'll probably be spending the winter in the American south, avoiding as much bad weather as I can. But you can be assured that the Pacific coast is definitely on my list of places to revisit.
Joshua Tree Sunset
Joshua Tree NP is one of those places that you really have to look hard at to find interesting images and compositions. As I've said before, most of the plant life there is simply ugly but one can find, if they search enough, compelling images that are really spectacular. The image I show today fits this idea perfectly.
Sunsets/sunrises are a contentious subject among professional photographers. Many disdain taking sunsets because they are so common (365 chances every year ... give or take). Everyone has a sunset/sunrise they took with their cell phone/tablet/point-and-shoot camera so they are literally a dime a dozen. I posted a Wyoming sunset a while back which was spectacular but isn't going to win any awards because it's "just a sunset". I understand that sentiment completely. So what does one do to make a sunset/sunrise spectacular? It has to be part of something bigger. The pinon tree image I posted a while back is a good example of this. The focus of the image is the tree and the sunset adds some beautiful color and aids the overall composition. It's not the main focus. If you go through my postings you'll see that same idea over and over.
This image was taken the first evening I was in the park. I was concentrating on a small pinon tree surviving in a crack in a rock and was watching a very nice sunset develop. While the wide angle 6D camera was setup on this tree, I was shooting this sunset with the 70-200 on my Canon 60D but was having a hard time of it because I didn't have the use of my tripod. Most of the images were blurred simply because I'm an old guy and not all that steady anymore. But, once I finished with the tree I was able to concentrate on the sunset with my 6D and the 16-35 f/4. The result is below. This is a 5 image bracket (2 ev apart) run through Photomatix and finished in Lightroom. I emphasized the foreground which was very interesting as a counterpoint to the sunset and the very attractive clouds. The dead tree adds some interest and is an important compositional element. All-in-all the result is very nice ... don't you think?
 |
| Joshua Tree Sunset - 33mm,f/18,HDR,ISO 100,license CC BY-NC 4.0 |
No comments:
Post a Comment