Combined a business trip with vacation time out west recently. It was a departure from the landscape in the areas of Tennessee and Arkansas of which I photograph. There is just something peaceful about the desert and it’s beauty. Although desolate, it has its own charm.
One of the destinations I sought out was Joshua Tree National Park, located in Southern California. You could spend days in this park and not see everything. 800,000 acres slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island. I drove in from the North entrance, and continued to drive through the park and realized that I was more than 1/2 way through, so I continued to drive out the South entrance. That was 56 miles!
The name Joshua tree was given by a group of Mormon settlers who crossed the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century. The tree’s unique shape reminded them of a Biblical story in which Joshua reaches his hands up to the sky in prayer. Ranchers and miners who were contemporary with the Mormon immigrants also took advantage of the Joshua tree, using the trunks and branches as fencing and for fuel for ore-processing steam engines.
These images were processed in Lightroom 4. Then I used Nik Software plugins. I’m a big fan of Nik Software and their filters. They have a variety of software plugins. I used the following filters on these images in Nik.
- Viveza2
- Color Efex Pro 4
- Bleach Bypass
- Detail Extractor
- Image Borders
What’s your take on the Nik Software Plugins?