Desert Panoramas

I haven't taken any pano shots in a while... overdue, right? Driving the Jeep around in Joshua Tree recently the conditions were ideal: Wide open vistas combined with great clouds. I was thinking about my friends at Skywatch Friday when I took these!

The shot above is one of my favorites. It's two images stitched together in Photoshop with my telephoto zoom lens set at 90mm. Double-click on the image to make it larger so you can see the dirt road off in the distance that I took to get down into this part of Joshua Tree National Park. It's called Geology Tour Road, and it's one of my favorite areas in the park. Here's the same shot in b&w. What's your preference??

Below is another pano shot of the same area. This time my zoom is set at 70mm and it's three images stitched together, so it covers a much wider angle. The problem with pano shots is that the more images you stitch together, the narrower the final shot ends up. I generally don't like to use more than three images or the shot gets too narrow.

The double-peaked hill to the left is called Malapai Hill. The geologists get really excited about this hill. I have no idea why and I don't know much about geology. I just know it looks cool and it's a nice hike over to the base.

The photo below is very different from those above. As I was bumping along home in the Jeep, traveling north past Malapai Hill, the sun had set and the sky was dark and grey except for this little sliver of bright, colorful sky. I used a tripod and a 400mm telephoto lens and stitched together two images. It's really just a very small area because of the telephoto lens, but it looked like a jewel on the horizon!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great weekend. Click on the Skywatch link to check out great skies from around the world!