29 Dec
2011

Posted in: Creativity
By Ian Plant    8 Comments

Swing for the Fences

After a week leading workshop clients to various locations in the California desert, I finally had some time to myself. I drove to Mono Lake and spent two days there waiting out a winter storm, hoping to get some interesting light. No luck—the storm broke well after sunrise, followed by clear skies which were forecast to last for days. With only two days left before my return flight home, I began to look for somewhere else to shoot. I had a few options, including the often photographed arches of the Alabama Hills, or a remote set of sand dunes in Death Valley that I have always wanted to explore, but the forecasted light left me less than enthusiastic. Then I began to think about a favorite location of mine in the Nevada desert, a place I had photographed before that had shown great potential—but the light had never worked for me. After consulting the weather forecast, it appeared that the storm was still lingering there, and would possibly be breaking up around sunset. I had a decision to make: get guaranteed but unexceptional shots from Alabama Hills or Death Valley, or take a seven hour drive and risk getting completely shut out in Nevada? Well, I’ve never been one for base hits. I decided to swing for the fences: off to Nevada I went.

With the pedal to the metal, as they say, I raced to my sunset location in the Virgin Mountains of Nevada. As I got closer to my destination, my excitement mounted: ominous clouds towered overhead, while the low plains to the west had clear skies. I felt that the shot I had been dreaming of for years would finally come to fruition.

During the 1932 World Series, Babe Ruth famously called his shot to center field, and then proceeded to punch a screaming liner to the very spot. I was hoping to do the very same.

After parking my car and hiking to my chosen spot, things began to unravel. The sandstone mounds I had planned to photograph were too high, blocking the clouds behind them. To add insult to injury, the clouds began to dissipate as sunset approached. I spent twenty minutes literally running around looking for something to photograph, but to no avail. Panting from the exertion, I made a few desultory images as the last light of the setting sun turned a few remaining clouds rosy pink. It looked like my mighty swing had ended up in a strike out.

Dejected, demoralized, exhausted from over a week of hard work, and sick with a cold on top of everything, I went back to my car and prepared to leave. I decided instead to explore in the waning light, driving along a dirt road deeper into the hills. As I rounded a corner, I noticed that one large cloud still hung over a distant mountain. As the darkness deepened around me, the western horizon, aflame with sunset’s afterglow, illuminated the land and clouds with a soft, warm light. I parked the car and headed out to explore the desert, hoping against hope to find a decent photograph before the light faded.

Suddenly I spied a large Joshua tree with an interesting shape and a clump of cacti at its base. Finally, it all came together—a leading foreground element framing the tree, which in turn reached up to the sky and the clouds behind. It was then that I noticed that the clouds were advancing, rather than retreating as they had been all night, and that they were coming straight for me.

Everything lined up perfectly—the composition, the still air, the otherworldly colors of twilight glow, the branches of the Joshua tree reaching for the heavens above, a supplicant for divine intervention. It is said that the prophet Joshua, for whom the tree is named, prayed for the sun to stop. It seemed that the prayer was answered this very evening; a stillness clung to the desert, and the gloaming paused for a moment, just long enough for me to get the shot. And then the moment was gone; the sun resumed its retreat, and I was left with nothing but darkness and the pungent fragrance of crushed mesquite in the air.

So I guess my wide swing had paid off, although I didn’t quite get what I had planned. I had called my shot to center field, but it ended up in right field instead. Either way, it was a home run (at least in my opinion). And that’s all that matters.

Technical details: Canon 5D Mark II camera, 14-24mm lens (@14mm), ISO 640, f/16, three minutes.

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About Ian Plant  (275 Posts)

Ian Plant's photographs and instructional articles have appeared in a number of books, calendars, and magazines, including Outdoor Photographer and Popular Photography. Ian writes a regular blog column for Outdoor Photographer online, and he is the author of numerous instructional eBooks and digital processing tutorials. Ian leads several photo tours each year.