Summer in the Desert

Visiting the desert in summer is often thought of as being condemned to hell: torrid temperatures, rocks that melt, no signs of life anywhere except for the human tourist wondering why s/he came to this place of torment.
Well, a little of that is true. It does get pretty hot out here, although the temperatures haven't been as high this year as they sometimes get. Also, here in the high desert, we tend to be about 10 degrees cooler than Palm Springs and the rest of the Coachella Valley.

Flowers are scarce, especially during this dry year we've had. Wildlife, even cold-blooded critters like lizards and snakes, stay in the shade or underground until it cools off. The greens, yellows, blues and other colors of spring are long gone. The annuals that produced the flowers are also dried up and blown away, leaving little/no evidence that they were ever there.

BUT -- for a desert lover like me, the "off-seasons" still draw me into places like Joshua Tree National Park. In early morning or late afternoon, lizards are darting under dormant shrubs or rough boulders. Ground squirrels brave the heat to do whatever it is ground squirrels do. Coyotes trot along, looking for a tasty goodie.

And for me, brown and blue is my favorite color combination. I'm sure that's part of the reason why I love deserts. And let's face it: this time of year, my colors dominate.

The heat and the occasional monsoonal humidity does get to me. But the desert keeps the rare beauty that only deserts possess.

More Fun in the Desert with Infrared

As usual, I continue to be fascinated by the look of infrared (IR) photography. As I mentioned in a previous post, most digital cameras are sensitive to IR and even have a filter in them that removes IR before the light reaches the sensor; otherwise, pictures could end up looking unexpectedly strange.

This is a photo taken earlier this year from Keys View in Joshua Tree National Park, CA. Toward the right is Mt. San Jacinto, the mountain that is largely responsible for creating the desert to the left. The city of Palm Springs lies on the flat area immediately to the left of the mountain. IR actually helps the town blend into the surrounding desert, since foliage of the non-native trees and shrubs is rendered white by IR. The white foliage, in turn, melts into the light-colored sands of the Coachella Valley.

IR also removes atmospheric haze. Mt. San Jacinto thus looks clearer and less distant than it actually is.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to do more traveling around the Southwest. But whenever that time comes, IR photography, as well as color, is on the agenda!

More Desert Reptiles

Well, good grief! I'm falling behind in blog entries, aren't I?

That's partly because I started a second blog. It appears on a Website for The Desert Sun, a Palm Springs-based newspaper.

I'm limiting the subject matter and images to "the beauty and mystery of the deserts." I've posted a combination of photos I've taken and paintings I've made. Most of the other blogs at the newspaper are political in nature, and I wanted something that might, hopefully, make the residents of the desert glad they live there.

In the meantime, today the weather in the desert was a little cooler, so I thought I'd go hiking and try to get more pictures of lizards that I can use in paintings. As it turned out, I saw numerous examples of only one species. Oh, well. Maybe another time.

I'm not 100% positive, but I believe this is one of a number of whiptail lizards that live in the desert. This good-lookin' fella (or gal) is partly obscured by vegetation, but the pic shows how long the tail is -- that'll be good to know for the paintings!

Cactus Flower -- Future Painting

This little beauty was blooming last week, and I thought I should take a picture of it since this was the last bud. I knew it would wilt within a couple of days, and I wanted to get a photo with the cactus backlit.

Why backlit? I have an idea for a painting that involves a night scene with the full moon in the sky and this cactus in the foreground.

I don't know exactly when I'll get a chance to work on this particular idea. But when I do, I'll already have the materials I'll need when flowers are not available. Since it'll be a night scene, I'll be altering the colors, so an exact color match isn't necessary (although I did some color-matching for these flowers a long time ago when I painted a flower from life).

I've sometimes said in artist's statements: I live to paint; and when I'm not painting, I'm thinking about future paintings. That last point is what I was doing today: collecting reference material for the day when I'll need it.

Infrared Flowers

The fun thing about infrared photos is how unpredictable the images can be.

In San Diego's Balboa Park (where I visited a couple of times over the last few weeks), some of the planters were filled with blue and purple delphiniums. Now -- if you remember your physics and your studies of the electromagnetic spectrum, an object appears blue when it reflects blue light and absorbs green and, especially, red light.

Following this line of thought, one might expect blue flowers to absorb infrared radiation as well, since this part of the spectrum lies next to the red frequencies. Nope!! As the accompanying pictures show, blue flowers DO reflect infrared.

I'm not an expert on insects, but I believe they're sensitive to infrared. Thus, if flowers want to be pollinated, they must do their best to attract the pollinators. In this case, it appears that the flower colors we see may not be that important to the bugs. Reflection of infrared may be all insects care about, as well as the scent flowers give off.

I wonder if the infrared photo is closer to what the insects see than what we see.

In San Diego

Well, neither of the paintings I placed in an exhibit in a Balboa Park gallery sold, so I drove down there to retrieve them.

Before I did, I wandered around Balboa Park taking color pictures for paintings, and infrared pictures just because I like infrared pictures!

While I was in an area planted with blue flowers (delphiniums and lavendar), I talked with another artist who was painting en plein aire (or, as I like to say, "in plain air"). His pieces were fun and definitely captured the feel of Balboa Park. His name is Norm Daniels, and he even has a Website you can visit: http://www.normhere.com. I'm always a little amazed that artists can sit outside on a beautiful day and crank out paintings so quickly while I have to labor over them inside in my studio.

Anyway, I've attached a black-and-white infrared photo and a color picture from the delphinium garden (close to where Norm was working) showing the Spanish colonial-style tower of the Museum of Man.

Wotta View!

This is another infrared photo I made recently. The scene is from Keys View in Joshua Tree National Park, looking toward the Southeast.

A few days before, we had high winds which put a lot of dust into the air. The next day, it was amazingly clear, and infrared is able to penetrate atmospheric haze that would appear in a "normal" photo.

The dark horizontal band immediately below the horizon on the left is the Salton Sea. One of the mountain peaks right above the Sea is Signal Mountain, which is in Mexico near the border with California.

Wouldn't you just love to have a house with a view like this?

More IR

I varnished the "Paint-In" painting today but still haven't photographed it. That might be Tuesday or Wednesday night. But I'll take it to the gallery on Friday, so I can't wait too long to get some high-quality pix of it and some others I haven't photographed yet.

So-o-o-o...here's another infrared photo I took in Joshua Tree National Park last Saturday. I partly wanted to shoot more IR images and partly wanted to see how the spring flowers were coming along. Sad to say, the flowers are pretty sparse this year. It seemed like we had lots of rain, but apparently it was scattered -- heavy in places, light or nonexistant in others.

Under the circumstances, black-and-white photography was quite appropriate.

Back to the painting: does N-E-1 have any ideas for a title for it at this point?

Full Color Vs. Infrared

Today I had business to take care of in Palm Desert, and I visited the area that I'm currently painting -- you may recognize the "Paint-In" view even with the minor changes I've made. I was looking for some different angles than those I've already photographed, and I also wanted to make some infrared pictures in addition to the full-color pix.

It's hard to describe the excitement I feel at how easy it is to do what I've done today. When I shot film, I had to use two cameras -- one for the color shots and one for the infrared pictures. (Or, if two cameras weren't available, I had to make a choice between which kind of images I needed the most). No loading and unloading the infrared film into/from the camera in total darkness. No exposure bracketing. All I do is mount the camera on a tripod, then take the color pictures with a polarizing filter and switching to an IR filter for the ... well, you can guess! I can quickly see the results -- another plus.

I'm not sure if I'll ever attempt to make money with the infrared pictures. But in the meantime, any time I go out shooting the landscape, the IR filter will come with me. Compared to the "good ol' days," infrared photography is fast -- and easy!