photography – Page 18 – On the road with Jim

Joshua Bud Picture of the Week

I know that this is near impossible to believe, but I may have been wrong when I claimed that the Joshua tree—Yucca brevifolia—was part of the Lily family. Well, it always had been, but modern DNA testing shows enough differences that botanists had to break the giant Lilly family into 40 distinct species. It used to be that scientist categorized plants by looking at their dirty little sex parts, and the flowers of Joshua trees, yuccas, and lilies look the same. Along comes DNA testing and—bam—Joshua Trees are now considered an agave, and its closest cousin is the yucca. DNA is turning our old assumptions upside-down. I always thought that my father’s family came from Poland, but when my DNA tests came back, they said that I’m actually Lower Slobbovian.

My botany lesson is included—at no extra charge—because I was shooting along the Joshua Tree Parkway this week and saw the trees beginning to bloom. Like other agaves, the trees put out a large phallic that opens to an enormous stalk with clusters of white flowers. Research suggests that frost damages the branch ends which triggers the blooms. If a tree doesn’t experience freezing, it doesn’t put out flowers or reproduce. These specimens grow as a single stalk, and the behavior limits the tree’s range to southwest deserts from 2,000 to 6,000 feet of elevation.

Another weird thing about Joshua trees is that they’re pollinated by the Yucca Moth. Polination happens when it lays eggs on the flowers which turn into seed pods resembling a small squash. If you’re a Euell Gibbons follower, you can eat the flowers and fruit. They need to be boiled or roasted to remove bitterness that comes from alkaline soil … and you’ll want to dig the worms out of the fruit. It has a banana taste, or so I’m told. I’ll stick to Mars Bars.

For this week’s featured image, I wanted to show an emerging bud without clutter—almost an abstract graphic. This image worked best for me. I call it Joshua Bud. The flower was overhead and with a cloudy sky. When I processed the photo, I blew-out the highlights to simplify the background. Like the groundhog, the bud says that spring is imminent.

You can see a larger version of Joshua Bud on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and come back next week when we’ll begin a series from a new place.

Until next time — jw

Rainbow Power Picture of the Week

Like a lot of photographers, I shoot a lot more images than I show. Most of them never see the light of day. On each outing—like last week’s rain day—I’ll fire off 50 to 75 shots and when I transfer them to my computer, I’ll have one or two keepers—if I’m lucky. The first thing I do is to delete the mistakes immediately—you know, the accidental shot of my feet that I get when taking the camera out of the bag—or shots that are hopelessly out of focus. Then I look for the best. I really should get rid of the rest, but even though I may never look at them again, I keep them on file.

There are lots of reasons that I reject a photograph. The composition isn’t right, the focus is soft, or the shot didn’t work. As a landscape photographer, I have a thing about power lines. They’re everywhere, and I have to work around them. That means that I’ll drive or walk a bit to remove them from the scene.

And that brings me to this week’s featured image that I call Rainbow Power. No matter how much we grumpy old photographers groan about them, we still look at pictures of flowers, babies, kittens, and rainbows. We just don’t want to get caught doing it. This week’s image is one of those rejects that I kept returning to it because it shows the range of light last week’s fast-moving storm dragged along the Joshua Tree Parkway as it moved north. Besides, I think rainbows are pretty.

I’ll probably never print this image because of the power lines, but this rainbow was intense and seemed to disappear into the clouds then descend again to the left out of the camera’s view. Oh, and I missed the pink unicorn because it ran over the hill before I could frame the shot. Moments after snapping this image, even the rainbow disappeared. The weather was happening so fast that I didn’t have time to work it—trying different angles, different framing, or changing the site to eliminate the wires. All that I had time to do was capture the moment—warts and all.

You can see a larger version of Rainbow Power on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and next week; we’ll show another featured image from the Joshua Tree Parkway.

Until next time — jw

February Storm Picture of the Week

My mother used to tell me that I didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain. Did your mom say things like that to you when you were growing up? Mine had a catalog of proverbs, one for every occasion. It’s too bad she’s gone now because after 70 years I finally have a witty retort. Making comments about our mental faculties—my sisters got the treatment too—was slandering our lineage and upbringing. In other words, my parents didn’t give me much intelligence, or they didn’t learn me well. So my behavior was her fault. Take that mom.

Maybe she was right though. Last week, we had a couple of fast-moving storms come through Congress. These weren’t the usual winter fronts that are uniformly gray and dreary. Instead, these storms had layered low clouds with scattered showers interspersed with blue patches. I spent a lot of time staring out of the window watching the changing light, before telling Queen Anne that I was going to play in the rain. You’ll never guess what she said.

After tossing my camera and a spare lens into Archie, I drove up and down the Joshua Tree Parkway a couple of times. It is my current monthly topic after all, and as I said last week, it’s nearby. There were times along the road that I had the sunroof open, so I could stand on the seat to take a shot, mixed with moments where the wipers couldn’t keep up with the deluge. Some shots got away because I couldn’t quickly find a safe spot to pull over. It seemed that there was always a semi filling my rearview mirror. This game of highway dodge-ball went on for a couple of hours before the light got so dim that the exposures were too long to hand hold the camera.

Of the shots that I took, I liked this one best. It shows a squall line as it moved north over Malpais Mesa and lots of Joshua Trees in the foreground. I called this image February Storm. I feel that the gold, gray, and even hints of blue captured the essence of last week’s storms. It also shows that there are exciting images to shoot even when the weather’s not perfect. Just remember to bring a cloth to wipe your camera dry.

You can see a larger version of February Storm on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and next week; we’ll show another featured image from the Joshua Tree Parkway.

Until next time — jw

Joshua Saplings Picture of the Week

I didn’t have to travel far for this month’s featured subject; in fact, there’s one growing in our park’s entrance. I’m talking about Joshua Trees—which are not trees, but lilies on steroids. They only grow in the southern deserts of Arizona and neighboring states. The Mormons were the ones that named them because the trees looked like the prophet waving them on to their promised land. Whoa, don’t Bogart that joint, Ebenezer. According to this Arizona Highway’s article, Territorial Governor John C. Fremont called them the most repulsive tree in the vegetable kingdom.

Although most people associate Joshua Trees with the national park in California and the band U2’s first album, Arizona’s grove covers a large area either side of U.S. Highway 93 from the State Route 71 junction 22 miles north to the Santa Maria River. If you’ve driven to Vegas, it’s the long downhill run in between the Tres Alamos Wilderness and the Date Creek Range. ADOT put up designation signs for that section, and then they added more signs that read “Joshua Trees” if you couldn’t spot them. Queen Anne’s the only person I know that hasn’t seen the roadside trees because she’s asleep the moment the car door closes.

Joshua trees have been in the news lately—not here, but at the national park in California. During the recent government shutdown, vandals took advantage of the lack of staff and damaged gates, signs, and fences. They also knocked down and ran over a good number of the trees with off-road vehicles. How senseless and selfish. Joshua Trees are very slow-growing, so it will take centuries for them to recover.

I found this week’s featured image while driving along the dirt road under power lines. There the trees were dense, so it was like trying to pick only one Victoria Secret Angel to photograph. The specimen that I selected had several new shoots growing under the parent plant. The way the young plants clustered around the adult reminded me of how aspen saplings cover a forest floor, so I called this image Joshua Saplings.

As usual, you can see a larger version of Joshua Saplings on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and next week; we’ll show another featured image from Joshua Tree Parkway.

Until next time — jw

Sleeping Under the Stars Picture of the Week

There’s something wonderfully romantic about how cowboys spent evenings eating beans around a fire before laying out their bedrolls and sleeping under the stars. It makes me wonder if I would have been any good riding a fence line. I love the outdoors, campfires, looking at the stars, and dreaming of the ladies back in town (sigh). I can assure you that I could never do that because the last horse I got on said, “oof” and sleeping on the ground has rocks, snakes, spiders, scorpions, skunks, and rabid chipmunks—not to mention the inclement weather.

Queen Anne and I still enjoy getting out in the wilderness; we just bring half of the house with us. For some reason, I sleep very well in our little Casita trailer. She has two layers of foam over the cushions that make into a full-size bed, and when I crawl under our down coverlet, my eyes slam shut faster than a mouse trap. As I lie next to my love and wrestle for more space, I listen to her rhythmic breathing. The hypnotic cadence is a mantra luring me to dreamland—until she misses a gear and sounds like a manual transmission exploding. But, she stops as soon as I nudge her to roll over.

All of this is fresh in my mind because we’re recently back from spending the week in the KofA Wildlife Refuge with The Ritz—our trailer. We succeeded in getting more images to finish up with this month’s topic but concluded that there is a lot more to the KofA range than a couple of blog posts. I think it may need to be a long-term project.

This tip was the first time we used the trailer in winter, and although the days were sunny, the wind blew, and the nights were colder than our Alaska trip. We had to use its heater at night. Even though we set the thermostat to 58º, it still came on often and blared at 85_dB. The first time it came on, it made that burning dust smell and I thought we were going to die of carbon monoxide poising, so I opened the windows, which was counterproductive. Like all furnaces, the smell cleared eventually and we stopped jumping every time it started. Even with that racket, I slept until sun up.

We spent two days exploring and shooting photos at the refuge, and on the last day, the wind died, so we were able to use a week’s worth of wood for a fire. We ate brats, drank rich cocoa, and roasted marshmallows for jimmyums over the burning logs. Its warmth kept us outside long enough that the stars came out—all of them. We stared at Mars so hard that it began darting across the sky until we looked through binoculars and proved it wasn’t doing that. Finally, the creamy streak of the Milky Way began to reveal itself and forced me to set up my camera.

This week’s featured image is the result of that effort. It’s called KofA Milky Way, and I shot it from our campsite. The bright spots on the ground are from the next camp. The mountain is Signal Peak silhouetted against the lights of Phoenix—150 miles to the east. The constellation Orion is center-right, and Pegasus with the Andromeda galaxy would be overhead, but the fire died, and the cold chased us inside before we could find it.

As usual, you can see a larger version of KofA Milky Way on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and next week; we’ll show another featured image from Arizona.

Until next time — jw

State Route 12 Project New Publication Announcement

Utah SR 12 Magazine-84 pages of color photos and stories printed on premium paper and you can buy on its Blurb Page.

There’s exciting news this morning coming from the international headquarters of Jim Witkowski Photography, located in beautiful downtown Congress. You may have wondered why things have been quiet around here for the last six months, or that I didn’t post many photos from our Utah trip last summer. Well, I was busy using that time to compile years of photographs into my new 84-page magazine—Utah State Route 12, and I’m pleased to announce that it’s ready for début.

The project’s theme is about the beautiful places in the Escalante Grand Staircase National Monument. The monument is so vast that it has three management areas: the western Grand Staircase Region, Kaiparowits Region, and Escalante Canyon Region on the east flank. There is only one paved highway that spans them all—Utah’s State Route 12. In this project, I wanted to show that there are beautiful marvels to see along its length, and the road is more than just a gateway to Bryce Canyon.

I plan to release my work in four versions: PDF, Magazine, Book, and eBook. I have completed the first two, which—I believe—should get the most attention, and I’m still working on the second half. It looks like they will be ready by Valentines. (Are you in the dog house and need a gift?)

PDF—this version is best for viewing on your computer, and except for bandwidth, it’s free. It’s ideal for those of you that don’t need more clutter. You can open the file and begin browsing right away or save it to your hard drive for later.

Magazine—this is a 84-page hard copy of photos and text printed on premium stock paper. I’m delighted with how well the images reproduced. The magazine’s cost is $ 22.99 (plus shipping) is admittedly pricy for a periodical, but compared to the book, it’s a bargain. Blurb handles the sales on their secure Website because they print them to demand. That means that there won’t be surplus versions lining birdcage bottoms.

Book—the large (13 x 11) coffee table book is still in progress which sounds simple, but it’s in landscape orientation, so the layouts have to be adjusted. The photos are larger than the magazine’s, and I had more space to embellish the stories. It will be available in softcover, hardback image wrap, and hardback with dust jacket. The price of the book is expected to be under $ 200.00 at most, so I think there will only ever be one edition—my own if Her Highness lets me.

EBook—this will be the last version and will be easy to do because it’s the book reformatted to fit your Kindle. That’s all handled by the computers. I don’t know what it will cost, but it will be ready next month, so keep watching my Books sections. The downside is that with this version, you won’t get the privilege of collecting dust with it.

I’m planning on releasing a new project each year as Queen Anne, and I travel. For this first project, I had to learn the software and build the templates; something that took up development time. Future projects should go from camera to print quicker. Plans for next year’s project are in progress.

You can get your free PDF version and preview the magazine by visiting their Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing them and please leave your comments here and/or on their Blurb page.

Until next time — jw

Winter Castle Picture of the Week

The KofA Wildlife Refuge takes up a good chunk of land. It covers a megabyte—or 1040 square miles if you’re not a computer nerd and don’t get the joke—nearly the size of Rhode Island. The topography is Basin and Range, which is standard for western Arizona, Nevada, and California’s Mohave Desert. Finally—one last bit of trivia before I move on from statistics—the wildlife range spans three mountain ranges (that’s three more than in Rhode Island).

The reason for so much space is to support herds of desert bighorn and antelope. Fifty years ago, both of these large animals were almost gone. Like bison, the sheep were plentiful in western Arizona, but a century of overhunting took its toll. It’s actually the sheep’s fault. They walk to the edge of a precipice then strike a magnificent pose saying, “Go on and shoot. I won’t move, and I’ll bet you’ll miss.” It was a living shooting gallery. By the time Arizona was a state, they were effectively wiped out.

Things started to change in 1933 when the Boy Scouts worked to get a game range established. Although the idea seems convoluted, you can’t hunt big horn without having sheep—the very logic that started the conservation movement. The game management people augmented the herds with transplants from other areas—including Mexico, but there was too much inbreeding. To successfully reintroduce them, they needed a broader gene base with multiple herds. Wildlife scientists established a crowd in the KofA and a southern pack in the Castle Domes and another in the New Water range to the north. To make this system work young males need to migrate across the open desert between ranges and breed with a different stock. Sheep can’t move freely across an Interstate Highway. Now you know why the KofA management area is so large. We like sheep, however rattlesnakes are a different thing.

When I set up to photograph this week’s featured image, none of what I told you was in my head. I thought it was pretty. That’s all I need to take a picture. I made it late in the day while driving away from Palm Canyon looking south. On the far side of King Valley, the Castle Dome Mountains are back-lit from the low winter sun. The atmospherics show off the range’s depth, as the peaks progressively get lighter in the distance, with Castle Dome Peak rising to 3788 feet. As I processed this image, I began to understand its story. I called it Winter Castle, and I hope you like it.

As usual, you can see a larger version of Winter Castle on its Web Page by clicking here. I hope you enjoy viewing this week’s post and return next week when we’ll show another featured image from the KofA Wildlife Refuge.

Until next time — jw