Palo verde no. 1. Day one of a month long project, ’31 Palo Verdes’. One new palo verde shot every day for the month of May. We’ll see where it goes.
’31 palo verdes’ – day 1
Tag: black and white photography
back road and morning sun
a new series
On May 1 I’m going to try something a little different, at least different for me. I’m going to post a month long series – ’31 Palo Verdes’.
I’ll do a new photo of a palo verde tree every day for the month of May, all taken here in the southern side of Joshua Tree National Park and the surrounding desert. My thought is to post one every morning, and it will have been taken that same morning, weather permitting. Sometimes I can’t get out due to the weather so it might not happen that way. If so I will have a few in reserve to choose from – the only rule will be that it has to be taken during May. It will all be new.
These will be done in snapshot format – square, black and white, with a snapshot border and a month/year date stamp like I’ve been doing.
So. It starts this coming Friday. Stay tuned. Who knows? It might even be interesting.
Cheers
palo verde skeleton and morning sun
This southern California desert is rough country. It deserves rough photos to convey its fierce nature. That’s what I try to get across.
broken ironwood
cholla and morning sun
When you think of Joshua Tree National Park you naturally think of joshua trees and rock formations and rock climbing. That’s what the park is known for.
Joshua Tree sits on the transition zone of two deserts. The north side, the more well known side with the rocks and joshua trees is in the Mojave Desert. The south side is in the Colorado Desert, a sub-desert of the Sonoran. It’s an area of chollas and ocotillos and canyons and rocky mountain slopes. There are no joshua trees in the southern half.
The south side of Joshua Tree National Park, though not unknown, isn’t as well traveled as the north side. Other than the highway through the park there are few roads there. It’s largely wilderness and hiking trails. I live along the southern boundary of the park. I can step out my door and walk right in. It’s where I wander and take pictures most every day.
in praise of the snapshot
“I am a passionate lover of the snapshot, because of all photographic images it comes closest to truth.”
Lisette Model
That may be a bit of a stretch, but then again… there is more than a little truth to that. There is no pretense, no theatrics, no attempt to be ‘arty’ in simple snapshots. They’re real and honest. There can be more art in that than in all the attempts to grab a viewer by the eyeballs.
I’ll play around with different things once in awhile like double exposures, adding a vintage look and the like, and sometimes they work, but mostly I just adjust the tones and contrast a bit (I use Snapseed if you care), maybe add a little grain, and slap a border and date on it and call it good. If I have to spend more than two or three minutes on a picture I figure it didn’t work and I shitcan it. I have others to choose from.
The desert, and any place else for that matter, speaks for itself, and doesn’t need theatrics or dramatic color or anything else. The art, if you want to call it that, is in how you see your world and how you choose to fit what you see into a rectangle or square. Anything more than that can be like putting legs on a snake.
desert topographics 