Here’s a new video featuring my Death Valley images. They will be appearing somewhere special in the near future.
Here’s a hint; it’s a black and white publication.
Cole
I recently spent time in Joshua Tree National Park in California, it was the first time I had visited there since 1987 when my wife I went camping. Coincidently our trip occurred right after U2 had introduced their new album “Joshua Tree” and I remember listening to it non-stop as we sunned ourselves on the large round boulders at the park. The music and that location were positively and indelibly embedded in my memory and each time I hear those songs I am transported back in time. So it was with great nostalgia and anticipation that I returned, hoping to find inspiration at this wonderful place.
As I headed to Joshua Tree I had no idea of how others had portrayed it, nor did I care, I only hoped that I could portray it through my vision. As many of you know, I practice something that I call “Photographic Celibacy.” What this means is that I do not study the work of other photographers in an effort to see as originally and freshly as possible.
I arrived and spent some time wandering and taking it all in. One of the first things you notice about Joshua Tree are the Joshua Trees themselves; a very large and treelike species of yucca. But what eventually caught my attention were those large round boulders, the same ones that I had sunned myself on 25 years earlier. They struck me in the same way the monoliths of the Oregon coast stuck me; ancient, unmovable and eternal. I imagined them sitting there, quietly observing the puny undertakings of man as he scurried about, full of self-importance. Perhaps these ancient stones were amused or perhaps they didn’t care at all.
I decided to create these images with long exposures; using from 30 seconds and up to 6 minute exposures. I wanted to give a sense of motion that would contrast with the stones and emphasize their permanence.
To achieve these long exposures, I used my Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter and my Singh-Ray Mor-Slo 5-stop ND filter, giving me 13 stops of ND but only allowing a 30 second exposure. Because the clouds were moving slowly that day, I needed longer exposure times to create the streaking effect that I wanted. To get longer exposure times I stacked a third 10 stop ND filter which gave me a total of 23 stops of Neutral Density.
To put this into perspective, if your correct exposure was 1/2000 of a second then 23 stops of ND would allow an exposure time of 32 minutes. For these images I was using a maximum of about 21 stops of ND to achieve 6 minute exposure times.
So why did I use a variable ND filter in this situation? First let me explain what a variable ND filter is, it operates much like a polarizer allowing you to adjust how much light enters the camera; turn it one way and you get more light and turn it the other way for less light.
The advantages of the Vari-ND in this situation are twofold: first I can “open up” the filter making it brighter and easier to compose through the viewfinder (at 23 stops it’s almost impossible to see anything). Secondly, it makes setting the correct exposure easier because I can simply turn the Vari-ND filter to get the right exposure.
While stacking three filters together allows long exposure times, it also presents some interesting challenges. Three filters give you a tremendous amount of vignetting at the corners, especially with shorter focal lengths. You can overcome this either by using a longer focal length or by going with a square format and simply discarding the corners. Because I was in close quarters when photographing many of these rocks, I could not go with a longer focal length, but the square format was perfect for this series. I think the square format is very elegant and find myself using it more and more.
When I photographed these stones I had a vision of what the final image would look like, but as is often the case, inspiration can also strike later in the creative process. While processing these images I chose to darken the images down, giving them an almost night time feel, and I also blurred most of the image except where I wanted the eye to focus on. It gives the images an almost tilt-shift look.
I enjoyed finding and creating these images. My trip to Joshua Tree was both a nostalgic and creative success.
