The main purpose of the road trip was to visit the Joshua Tree National park.
We arrived at sunset and managed to get a few shots off before the sun disappeared completely behind the mountains. The fading light and heavy sky made for some really interesting compositions and some vivid colour. I even got to break out a little bit of off camera flash as the light fell.
The next day we managed to arrive just too late to capture the far too quick sunrise, but insead we were met with heavy skies for the whole day (they broke later on that night for some of the worst weather I’ve ever driven through, and some of the worst that area has ever seen). Shooting that day was a constant battle to fight the exposure difference between the clouds and the dark foreground (especially in the high walled ‘Hidden Valley’, but getting the whole scene in one exposure left me with some really interesting options for post processing. I’ll admit that I’ve done a bit more post work on these images than I would normally, but the combination of the strange subdued light and the alien nature of the landscape lended itself well to the manipulation.
