This is the end of the day on my 3rd trip out to Joshua Tree in a week, and it was a productive day. I drove out there in time for sunrise on only 3 hours of sleep, but I wanted to get there for sunrise as there was clouds in the forecast. I haven't processed those yet, because this one really struck me from the evening on the way back out.
I had spent the afternoon in Indian Cove, it's like the Jumbo Rock area but on Steroids and is where I would camp with friends as teenagers on weekends. But I left in time to get back to the southern entrance to shoot the sunset. It was mostly clear skies, but to the west there was some thin clouds that had developed that would add a nice touch to the sky.
This one was directly outside the jeep as I came out of the hills onto the wildflower area. I pulled over as the sun was getting low to the first area of wildflowers I came across, and there was this rock that was reflecting the gold from the setting sun. There was some side lighting of the lupines, and it made for a grand scene.
Initially I was going to process just the single shot, but being as tight in as I was with the 24-120mm and shooting at 62mm I did know that my DOF was limited so the background was soft. I am usually okay with that, but I almost always will also shoot a few extra shots where I will get the background in focus. An awesome feature of the Nikon D850 is the ability to shoot the Focus Stack for you automatically. So after the initial shot, I simply switched on the Focus Stack Mode and it took 5 photos with the focus automatically changing from front to back. The whole Focus Stack was done in less then 10 seconds. That's a huge time savings when time is running short at sunsets and sunrises.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
I had spent the afternoon in Indian Cove, it's like the Jumbo Rock area but on Steroids and is where I would camp with friends as teenagers on weekends. But I left in time to get back to the southern entrance to shoot the sunset. It was mostly clear skies, but to the west there was some thin clouds that had developed that would add a nice touch to the sky.
This one was directly outside the jeep as I came out of the hills onto the wildflower area. I pulled over as the sun was getting low to the first area of wildflowers I came across, and there was this rock that was reflecting the gold from the setting sun. There was some side lighting of the lupines, and it made for a grand scene.
Initially I was going to process just the single shot, but being as tight in as I was with the 24-120mm and shooting at 62mm I did know that my DOF was limited so the background was soft. I am usually okay with that, but I almost always will also shoot a few extra shots where I will get the background in focus. An awesome feature of the Nikon D850 is the ability to shoot the Focus Stack for you automatically. So after the initial shot, I simply switched on the Focus Stack Mode and it took 5 photos with the focus automatically changing from front to back. The whole Focus Stack was done in less then 10 seconds. That's a huge time savings when time is running short at sunsets and sunrises.
All comments are welcome,
Jim
