The beginning of editing Russia.

I am ever so grateful for all of my friends in Russia that took me into their homes and hung out with me. I even met a curator who wanted to bring me back and host a gallery of my images.

San Succulent

Los Angeles Landscapes

Before & After

Before


After


I think silhouettes can be powerful and striking images. My goal when I compose and edit an image is to make it interesting enough to look at for more than two seconds.

For those that know Zion, this is Angels Landing, one of tallest peaks to hike in the park.
Look at the pictures on the link, and then look at mine. what is more interesting?

How you get the black silhouettes is adjusting the levels of the image. In this case, removing the information from the dark part of the image, turning it black. And adjusting the saturation in the sky, to taste.

I was watching some intense hikers climb to the top, and thought a silhouetted shot would be cool.

Zion Wild Life

Finishing up some of the last images for my Zion project.

Bambi


Heckle & Jeckle (From the Mighty Mouse cartoon)


Woody Wood Pecker.

The fall of Zion

Sometimes I forget there is a season called "Autumn." The weather in Southern California might drop to a brisk 70 degrees in the fall, and my tree in my front yard is still green with all of the leaves.

When I arrived in Zion, I was blown away by all the yellows and reds.

Solitude in Zion

After Nick passed away, I needed a serious unplug and recharge from life. Good old fashion 'Joe time.' I like to go to special places to unplug from computers, work, school, home, cell phones, traffic...everyday things that we get so caught up in. I knew I needed to leave very soon after the funeral for a few days, and I didn't know where I was going to go, just go. The day before, I was thinking of going to Yosemite before it got cold and I have never been there yet (it is so crowded...). But it was supposed to rain all weekend, no fun sitting in the rain. So I decided to go to Zion, which was supposed to not have rain.

I drove my car. Man, my Mini gets some awesome gas mileage. 900 miles round trip and $80 in gas. 35-45 MPG. The motorcycle needed too many repairs, and I wasn't in the mental zone to focus for hours and hours on the bike.

The first night, it wasn't supposed to rain, so I didn't put the rain cover on my tent. And it rained around 2AM. I didn't even care to get up. It was pretty cool to hike around in the muddy trails, and get on their tram with my muddy boots. The next night was super windy, my tent was flying everywhere because I didn't steak it down. I rolled over and was glad it wasn't raining.

In total, I spent four days and three night in this awesome canyon. I roamed the earth and didn't really talk to anyone.

There are some awesome National Parks out there, but I have to say that Zion easily makes the top 5. The Grand Canyon has the most intense hike (12 mile trail to the bottom), the roads in Rocky Mountain tundra are at 13,000 feet, but Zion has trails on the egde of the cliffs with warning signs about falling off.
Zion is on the edge of two deserts and the Colorado Plateau, and has the tallest sandstone cliffs in the world. The sand dunes used to be 3000 feet tall before the canyon was formed a few billion years go. The Sahara Desert is only 300 feet.

More edited Joshua Tree images

I am considering some images to put in my museum. So I am playing around with with some of my favorite Joshua Tree images

High Contrast


Infared

Night shots of Joshua Tree

It was dark. It was windy. It was cold. It was scary.
All I had was one flashlight and thirty seconds exposures to run around and shine some light on some rocks I couldn't really see.

Joshua Tree Landscapes, edited.

Here are the Joshua Tree "after" photos.