An ode to the weird things you see in the desert.
For the last several years, I’ve made it a point to get out to Joshua Tree National Park to meet up with my buddy Mark for a long weekend of night photography out in the desert. I absolutely love going out there, perhaps because it’s just so different from here in East Tennessee. One of the things I’m always amused by are the random things you’ll stumble upon – everything from strange rock formations to art installations to junked cars. Junked cars… in the national park? Yep! And a fun mystery to go along with them, but more on that next week!
I forget how we happened on this place to begin with. Either Mark or I had seen someone’s blog about it, though no one shared its exact location (which is frankly good, as it’s in the middle of nowhere, deep inside the park, well outside the reach of a rescue in any reasonable amount of time if you were to get in trouble). Mark thought he knew roughly the area of the park, and after scouring Google maps for quite a long time, I managed to spot what looked like cars scattered about on the desert floor. Had to be the ones we’d seen, or somehow another collection of cars. Unfortunately Mark got stuck working for the first part of my trip out this year, so he told me to go on without him. Rather than go by myself, a new friend, John Naughton, met up with me and armed with two 4×4 vehicles we set out across the desert to locate a pin I’d placed on the map.
On the way out there, I kept debating in my head whether these old cars and other things around would make for cool foregrounds. I had only seen a handful of pictures of them, had no idea how grown up the area would be, nor what direction the vehicles would be facing, and so mentally I was making backup plans. John and I got there well ahead of dark so we’d have time for a plan B if we both decided the idea was kind of lame, but once we found it all and started playing around with lining compositions up with parts of the night sky, it became clear that there was no need for plan B. We’d found yet another playground in the desert!
More next week!
–Dan Thompson
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