I love these Ocotillos that decorate California’s Colorado Desert. They have such strong shapes for photography, and when they flower they have beautiful red tips on their green stems.
This is a pretty typical scene in the Colorado Desert, which encompasses about 7 million acres and is a low-elevation desert with warm winter temperatures, making it perfect for us snowbirds.
Isn’t it confusing that the Colorado Desert is in California? But then again, lots of things down here aren’t what you would think. Like how this Ocotillo isn’t really a cactus and the Joshua Tree isn’t a tree.
This particular Ocotillo was in Anza Borrego State Park, one of my favourite destinations for boondocking. I’ll have many more images from Anza Borrego coming up on the blog.
Please click the image to view a larger version.
I made this image by blending three exposures into a high dynamic range image. I don’t usually create high dynamic range images in scenes that include plant life for two reasons: first, plants, especially trees with lots of leaves, don’t look natural in HDR; and second, plants always move making it difficult to make blend exposures without it coming out blurry.
In this case, it was a very calm night and the plant was barely moving and since it doesn’t have leaves I decided to give it a try to make the most of the beautiful sky and darker foreground.
I love the crispness in this image; it projects such a feeling of isolation, peace and quiet.
Thank you Ken! This is one of my favourite places to be alone in the wilderness 🙂
I really love this photo. It captures so much beauty! Thank you for sharing.
Many thanks for your kind comments Mary!
Really beautiful & tranquil scene. I don’t notice any blurring on the ocotillos either. Really nice use of HDR without making it look like your typical HDR heh.
Thank you very much Devlin, I do like my HDR images to look realistic and not over cooked.
Very nice place to be in the boondocks! Hopefully some rain will happen in the future to get some wildflowers going there. I like the soft light on the rocks. BTW, the ghosting feature in PS makes multi-exposure for HDR in landscape possible to reduce movement in vegetation. Enjoy!
Hi Harvey, I haven’t tried the ghosting feature in PS, but I have tried it in Photomatix and it does work well. Sometimes it’s easier to try to make an HDR from a single exposure as well. Thanks for your visit and comments!
Beautiful soft colors contrasting with the harshness of the environment. 🙂
I think you put your finger on exactly what I like about this photo! Thanks for your visit and comments RoseAnne!