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The Path Less Traveled

Walter Feller

New member
I'm trying to show a little anxiety in a harsh and surreal environment.

It's an HDR made from 5 exposures right as, and, for a couple minutes after the sun fully set and fell beneath the horizon.

The composition is purposefully annoying.

400-sm-jtc-mapped.jpg


The taller plants are Joshua trees, the shorter are cholla cactus. Everything has spines. Very sharp ones. Messing up or moving fast can result in extreme pain. The kind with barbs.

If anyone can let me know their thoughts I appreciate it.

& yes, it looked pretty much the same walking to the shot.

-w
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Hi Walter!

First let me say that this is a picture with so many original possibilities. Some are really awful and a few sublime. However, the subject is so difficult and the color palette you have chosen raises the stakes.

Where about in the park is this? We should, I think be getting GPS systems so we can just refer to a map. I ask because I sometimes like to go and check the site.

I have problems with the setting of anxiety before setting the subject. To me, at least there is an issue with the delineation of the different foreground and middle ground vegetation.

I'd start with getting the shapes compelling.

(Again, this is a case where I personally would want to include more in the framing to put the textured vegetation in some sort of context. The angle of capture might be another area of issue for my own tastes, although this is just my preference. I would like to see the proximal plants come down to the ground so that we have a place from which everything is anchored. As it is I cannot see the form of the ground supporting the plants not much of the smaller Joshua Trees on either side of the sky line.)

Right now, however, this is the picture and there is no room for adding wider context. One has to work with that. It might be that a grayscale image would have the tonal range to make this picture work. I have spent about an hour on this one little image. I can assure you it's difficult but fascinating, stubborn but yet malleable. I really would want the original to comment more, but I am intrigued.

Asher
 

Walter Feller

New member
PM sent. The location is/was in a vacant field in Phelan, CA (15-20 miles from here). I had noticed survey markers in the area a day or two before. It's probably all under a mini-storage right now. We're disappearing.

I've heard that long exposures are images of events that never happened- This is an event that never happened in a place that (most likely by now) no longer exists.

-w
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Interesting, observation, Walter!

You see the picture you sent me also disappeared! I sent you a zirconium clad PM to penetrate the ghosts force field!

Now a serious question!

Aren't the Joshua tree protected as a National Monument?

Asher
 

Walter Feller

New member
Interesting, observation, Walter!

You see the picture you sent me also disappeared! I sent you a zirconium clad PM to penetrate the ghosts force field!

Now a serious question!

Aren't the Joshua tree protected as a National Monument?

Asher

Asher, sorry about that. I corrected the problem.

The trees are protected, and are required to be relocated properly prior to construction.

This is an easy work-around. The fine for damaging or failing to move a tree is minimal. Most times it is easier, and more economic to pay the fine instead of move the tree. This way it also becomes a money generator for the associated agencies.

In the case of custom home and owner-builders, they will build the house and leave as many as possible, then the buyer/owner will water the tree until it falls over- naturally.

-w
 
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