Back to Joshua Tree!  

As I mentioned last week, I wanted to take a minute and share some of the daytime photos I captured while I was out west, in addition to all the night images I captured.  This week we’re back to Joshua Tree National Park for some photos I really liked.  Rather than limit what I was going to share, I decided to just make this week’s Picture of the Week a photo essay, so that I could share a whole bunch.  Some of these will look familiar if you caught the whole night segment, and some of these will be totally new.

I won’t explain all of these, but let me add some commentary to a few.  The image above was taken the evening we had a bunch of clouds roll in.  We had been wandering around in the area where we would later run into a mountain lion, scouting out photo locations.  The clouds had been so steady, I wasn’t really counting on any decent light, but out of nowhere, the sun got below the clouds enough to put on a bit of a show!  In the image above I really liked how the setting sun lit up the cliff on the right.  Further down is another image just down the wash from where this one was taken, where you can see those mountains off in the distance a bit better.  Such a beautiful sight!

The image immediately below is another one I really liked as well.  When Mark and I are out looking around, we’ll comment on how a rock looks like one thing or another.  When I saw this particular tree, I couldn’t help but laugh because to me, it looked like it was trying to break free of the rocks.  I had actually hoped to go back and try to shoot this one at night, but after seeing the mountain lion we bailed on all other ideas and just left.  I’m not sure it would play as well as night anyway, but in any case, I really like how this one turned out.  

I hope you enjoy the rest!  More next week!

–Dan Thompson