Joshua Tree Dawn

This is another from the burned joshua trees in the Mojave desert. I found the burned forest forlorn and beautiful.

D850, 24-70mm

2 Likes

Harley, your placement and treatment of the downed tree in the foreground does a fine job of emphasizing the melancholy in the land against a lovely sky. The shafts of light scattered across the foreground are a fine extra. I am fascinated with how the taller trees in the right half all lean, suggesting that there’s a lot of wind from a particular direction here.

Wow, tragedy against the beauty. A really telling image, Harley.

The sky here is super nice, somewhat rare to see these clouds here in SoCal. I also like the placement of that burned tree. I may be tempted to bring down the brightest highlight just a tad more to bring out the colors in that area.

Beautiful photo of a sign of the times. The scene is forlorn, but the lovely colors in the sky give it a bit of hopefulness, too.

The lean might be from the wind generated by the fire. Around here, a lot of the burnt vegetation has a definite “lean” and I know that is from the fire wind, not general weather wind.

Another terrific scene. I like the arrangement and the sky. Wish the right side of that wasn’t blown out though and the whole image looks blocked and flat. It might benefit from some luminosity masking to lift the shadows and mids. Doing that seems to add life to a photo and I imagine that would work well here. Also the mountain itself looks quite light…not sure what to make of that.

Harley, with an outstanding sky like this one as a backdrop most any landscape would be a winner. No doubt I have a long kinship with scenes having J-trees in support of the image. In this case the FG fallen and decaying tree has a history to be shared with the resulting burn scars overall… :+1:

What a terrific sky Harley. I really like the white on black of the downed J tree in the foreground. There is a stark beauty to it but there is also a feeling of something lost. As has been said, a sign of the times for sure. The golden highlights in the grass throughout provides wonderful warmth matching the sky. I might be tempted to clone out that tall j-tree poking up above the mountains in the middle of the frame. It really draws my eye.

Interesting thought on the tree sticking up. I will have to give it a try. Thanks