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Algodones Sand Dunes Wilderness

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Sand dune in the
Algodones Sand Dunes Wilderness,
Imperial County, CA
My photo buddy Denise and I went to the Algodones Sand Dunes Wilderness in the far south-eastern corner of California recently. This is more a dune-buggy heaven than it is photographers' paradise, unfortunately. Although about 8 miles wide and 40 miles long, most of it is given over to recreational vehicles. The Wilderness part per-se is on the north side of State Highway 78, but for almost the entire 8 mile stretch, there is a no parking restriction on both sides of the road.
Access is gained at the western end of the stretch of Highway 78 where there is a large parking area used by the "off-roaders". You have to park your car there and walk back to the highway and cross to the north side. Unfortunately at this point most of the dunes have petered out, so if you want to get into the decent dunes you need to hike from this point east. On the other side of the highway, however, the splendid and mammoth dunes are abuzz with dune buggies and bikes.

Oh well, we had to make the most of it since we'd come so far.

We deliberately aimed to arrive late in the afternoon so that the sun would be low in the west and casting long shadows over the dunes. I was to discover, however, that the environment amounted to a pretty big challenge to getting good photos because of the high-contrast setup: bright blue sky, bright western sides of the dunes, and dark shadowed eastern sides. It's the kind of scene that would best be shot using "bracketed exposures" and then processes the files as HDR images. Unfortunately that requires you shoot from a tripod and I didn't bring my tripod along with me. Another boo-hoo, and more reason to go back again someday and do it all over again.

Here's a previous post about bracketing and HDR photography.

Anyhow, despite all the challenges, I did manage to come up with a few photos that are worth sharing. Check them out in my Desert Southwest Photography gallery at Imagekind.
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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

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Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far. Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden. Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry. ...
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The Watchman and Virgin River — Painterly Winter Landscape

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The Watchman and Virgin River, Zion National Park — Painterly Winter Landscape — © John Corney The Watchman is one of Zion National Park's most recognizable formations — the peak that rises up just past the south entrance, often photographed reflected in or framed by the Virgin River as it winds through the valley floor. I photographed this view on the same January 2006 trip as the other winter Zion piece in this collection, with the river running low and the cottonwoods and willows along the bank stripped bare for the season. I worked this one up with AI assistance into a full painterly interpretation, the same way I've approached the rest of this Zion series — directing the process the way a film director works with a cinematographer, choosing what to carry forward from the original photograph and what to push harder. Here that meant leaning into the warmth of the low winter light against the cool snow on the upper ridgeline, and letting th...
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