Riverside County

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Joshua Tree NP, Jumbo Rocks group. Resembling a penguine and a peacock ?

• Ellen Glasgow.

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Key’s view is one of the underrated gems of the Joshua Tree National Park. Part of the Hidden Valley section of the park, the southwest exposure, provides a promising outlook point towards the Coachella Valley Preserve and Indio Hills. The location makes this viewpoint a spectacular sunset location. There are ample parking and some stunning trails. The trails surrounding the outlook are what make Keys view great. Since it is a desert, the view is in no way restricted, and you are free to wander around and find your compositions.

I used this composition as I wanted to showcase the cracks on the granite rock formation. I was hoping that this composition would balance well with the vast valleys and the distant mountains that are visible on the right. I was not sure if the plan worked at the time, so I didn’t process the image. But every time I was in the folder, if felt an attraction and finally decided to process the picture. It looked like I did a good job getting the exposure right, but I am still not entirely sure about the composition.

• Henry Morton Stanley.

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Recently we had a chance to visit Joshua tree national park which is about 3 hours from our home and see a natural feature of the park which we missed the last two times we were there. The monolith and the Juniper tree is a well known feature and I desperately wanted to capture it in a sunset setting with some nice color in the sky. I had this shot in mind for a long time and I am really happy it came out the way I expected. Thank god for small wins.

Hope you all had a very happy New Years and wish everyone a great 2016.

-Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

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This is an older pano shot I made at Joshua Tree National park some time ago. We originally planned to be at the Juniper and Monolith for sunset and got some shots that I posted earlier. But as the sunset was about done the sky was exploding in colors and I wanted to see if I could shoot a pano image just to emphasize the actual size of the rocks and landscape rather than just the distorted perspective shot of this iconic scene.

Si waked a bit more to a better vantage point to get a view that included the monolith and the sunset sky. And tried to capture the whole scale of the scene in front of us.

• Conrad Hall.

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This was the shot I went to Keys Point for and I am extremely satisfied by the way it turned out. I was a bit skeptical about this location after reading about the smog and the mountains which usually hides the sunset from view.

I didn’t had much luck scoping out other locations using Google and we were pretty tired by the time so we just decided to just stick to what we knew. Fortunately the sunset was perfect and looked spectacular. It was a challenge to get some foreground interest without getting any of the tourists in the frame but I placed myself pretty much at the edge of the viewpoint and managed to snatch this shot. All your comments and encouragement are greatly appreciated. Hope you all have a great weekend..

A Smooth Reflections Long Exposure at Arch Rock in Joshua Tree National Park. Waiting for a time when no people were in the shot was a test of my...

At times, Joshua Tree National Park felt like another planet. The rock shapes transported you away from this place, and landed you in a terrain...

• Khalil Gibran.

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Joshua Tree National Park was one of the first National Parks we visited after moving to the west coast. At the time, my location scouting was mostly based on google maps street view, and to be honest, and I was a bit disappointed with what I saw. The park didn’t look anything special other than its namesake trees. I was sure we could see everything that worth seeing in 3-4 days. I admit not a lot of planning went into the trip.

But boy, was I completely wrong. Joshua Tree NP is a park that sneaks up on you once you cross its boundaries. There are multiple valleys and at least two different desert systems within the park limits. So the scenery keeps on changing along with the plants and the rock formations. Here is also where I learned about the change in NP infrastructure design. While they designed the National and State Parks on the east coast, accessibility is a prime factor, and it's pretty common to be able to drive right up to a scenic view. It's not the case for parks on the west. Accessibility was not the prime concern; it was to keep the parks wild. You can see this change in thinking even in parks like Yosemite and Grand Canyon. Their famous and easily accessible sections constitute a tiny percentage of the park's total area. One of my biggest regret about Moving out of Socal was that we didn’t get enough time to explore Joshua Tree NP.

The Jumbo rock section of the park is the subject of today’s post. We did a small hike here called the skull rock loop. While hiking the short loop trail, we realized that jumbo Rocks is a location that can easily take one couple of days to explore and still go home with the feeling that you haven’t gotten all the possible compositions. Unfortunately, I could only afford a couple of hours here during our trip. I sincerely hope that one day I could return and explore the park a bit more.

• A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.

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Recently, I have had some time and opportunity to brush up on some of my photoshop skills and I decided to go over some of the old shots to see if there are photos that were left without processing. While processing, I sometimes discard images that don’t look natural and usually it's my limited abilities with photoshop that is to blame. So since I learned some new skills, I visited some of my old shots and some of them turned out really good.

This is an old shot from Joshua Tree National Park. This is one of the first National parks we visited after moving to the west coast. This shot was taken at Dante's peak with the smoke from the wildfires in nearby areas contributing to some color. This shot is a combination of about three images that were exposed for dark, mid and high tones and then blended together using luminosity masks. I tried HDR on this shot but the added noise and the garish colors that resulted from HDR never satisfied me. But, now I believe this photo truly depicts what we experienced, and I am proud to post it on Flickr.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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I was pretty much blown away by this sight at the keys View Point . This streaking of sunlight through the mountain peaks happened just as I was about to leave and fortunately I had the presence of mind to set the camera and shoot away as this only lasted a couple of minutes. Unfortunately I still had my polarizer on the lens and got a bit weird sky but the rest of the picture came out so nice I really don’t care. I hope the next time I am at this place I can be better prepared and hopefully I will get one of those rare smog free days.