One of Joshua Tree National Park’s giant marbles rests among the Jumbo Rocks just before sunrise on a winter morning. Turbulent clouds above streak across the sky in this two minute long exposure, forming an unexpectedly radiant pattern above the rock formation. The most brilliantly colorful morning light across the clouds was beginning grow from the east in the right of the frame. The blues and purples would gradually be overwhelmed by red and orange for a fleeting moment before fading to grey once the sun began to shine down on the canvas of the clouds. However the long exposure revealed a beautiful gradient from the orange to the blue which is quite beautiful in its own right.
Tags: boulders california clouds exfoliated granite joshua jumbo marble national park rocks sunrise tree vivid joshuatreenp
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Joshua Tree National Park is one of California’s rounded boulder wonderlands, as the multitude of smooth boulders here can attest to. Just after sunrise, warm golden light illuminates a smooth slope of granite with large boulders. A larger collection awaits the afternoon sun behind, and rain attempts to fall from clouds beyond before colliding with turbulent winds and evaporating into virga. The curiously round shapes of the granite here are caused by spheroidal weathering. Acidic water over the centuries seeps into the outer layers of the rock and chemically turns the feldspar crystals in the granite into clay. This facilities the rock fracturing and breaking apart. Since the chemicals can seep deeper into pointed areas rather than the flat parts of a given rock, the pointed bits were progressively eroded until only smooth surfaces remain. Exposure to surface erosion removes all the fractured pieces leaving behind just the smooth and delightful shapes.
Tags: boulders clouds desert granite joshua joshuatreenp national park rain rocks spheroidal sunrise tree virga
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Look behind you. I sometimes have to remind myself to do this. Especially when it is at sunrise or sunset. Those two transitional times tend to put on two types of shows. There’s the backlit clouds in the direction of the rising or setting sun, which can have deeply saturated glowing colors, and then there’s the front-lit clouds being hit by the warm light which tend to be a little more muted. During a spectacular sunrise looking more towards the sun at an iconic rock formation in Joshua Tree National Park I happened to turn around and see this spectacular scene above the campground. I quickly spun around to capture it. A passing weak weather system caused the perfect sorts of sunrise clouds to be lingering far and wide. These clouds are rough and undulating on their undersides. These peaks and valleys of fluffy white water particles reveal their shapes as the light rakes across them at such a shallow angle. The moment is fleeting of course, as within a few minutes the sun has risen above the level of the clouds and will instead be shining down upon them instead of across, but for a short time the light show was spectacular.
Tags: california camper clouds desert grainite joshua tree jumbo rocks national park rocks sunrise virga joshuatreenp
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Over my years of studying sunrises and sunsets, I've come to recognize and fall in love with the different types. High thin clouds are a particular favorite for their long lasting deep colors, but while those are the ones I look out for most, thick low clouds have a particularly vivid magic when the conditions are just right. Such was the case on this Monday morning in Joshua Tree National Park, where I had trekked for a quick overnight to shoot my annual silly holiday photo. I awoke to a thick, relatively low cloud deck above, and I scrambled across the granite sculpted by exfoliation around the Jumbo Rocks area to hang out and shoot the show. The rocks here are indeed jumbo, and atop one band of strangely jointed pieces is seemingly a marble, one of the more photographically famous pieces of rock in the park perhaps. I pulled out my phone to see exactly where the sun would rise and saw to my delight that the cloud bank ended to the east and thus the Sun would rise up through a window. The stage was set for a spectacular show. And so it was. The sun rose up through that window and the deep colorful band of sunrise light shot across the bottom of the thick, low cloud deck. It makes the sky seem like a painting, as the vivid hues rake across the turbulent contours of the underside of the clouds revealing textures that otherwise blend invisibly into solid grey. For a few moments, the world was a painting, and I was standing right in it.
Tags: boulders california clouds exfoliated granite joshua jumbo marble national park rocks sunrise tree vivid joshua tree
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There’s always something magical when certain kinds of things are hit with backlight. Things like the prickling spines of the cylindropuntia bigelovii cactus, which is nicknamed the teddy bear cholla. With a glowing edge just like you would see with fine hair, the outlines of these unfriendly plants can be seen against a sun that will soon disappear behind the mountains to the west. Also known as the jumping teddy bear, these cacti do like to give hugs but not let go. In fact this cactus spreads primarily by just that. Curiously, few if any viable seeds are produced and instead the little stems detach easily when they are picked up by an unfortunate animal or person (or fall off) and then those stems will take root in a new location. The spines are known to be particularly painful to remove should you become ensnared. It’s possible that this entire garden is from one single original plant that spread and spread into this forest of potential pain. I really hope this park and all the rest can be fully staffed soon. I fear for the damage being done there currently.
Tags: 35mm backlight backlit cactus california cholla cholla garden colorado desert desert flare joshua tree mountains national park sigma teddy bear joshuatreenp
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