On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions. From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
This series was created by Alain Chamot (1971-2020).
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Jepp and Tom Ryan homesteaded in the Lost Horse Valley in 1896 near a spring and the Lost Horse Mine. The spring provided water to the mine, 3 miles away. The Ryans built an adobe house and quite a few outbuildings.
After the gold boom died out in the early 1900’s, a number of folk tried their hand a cattle ranching at Joshua Tree and surprisingly didn’t do well. There’s not much left of the ranch house, just the slab and some walls primarily due to a fire in 1977 and vandalism.
It’s a short walk from the Ryan Campground, but there was no parking there, so I ended up hiking from the trailhead on Park Blvd (the road that runs though the northwestern portion of the park). The trail starts off with sand but the ground firms up pretty well after that.
The longer trail passed some really nice rock formations which even inspired a rare B/W infrared treatment. At one point it looks like Joshua Trees were planted in a row leading up to that formation. Most of the photos (7/12) were shot with the IR camera using the IRChrome filter. I’ve interspersed the visual shots amongst the IR shots (they’re the ones with green Joshua Trees).
Black and White infrared view of this interesting rock formation along the trail.
The Joshua Trees look like they’re planted along a path leaded up to the rocks.
Rocks among the Joshua Trees.
The Ryan Ranch house overlooks Lost Horse Valley in this infrared shot.
The Ryan Ranch house and the rocks at the foot of Ryan Mountain to its east.
Looking north across Lost Horse Valley to the wonderland of rocks.
The remains of an old windmill.
These Joshua Trees form a colorful foreground to the se rocks in this infrared shot.
sab
That first photo is magically weird.
Sitting here in very damp and mostly cloudy Ohio, what a huge and diverse country we are. I loved living in the West, but I did hate the sun out there. Fifteen minutes and I was broiled and peeling.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@sab:
That pretty much sums up Joshua Tree.
Baud
The colors on the plants are really interesting.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Different plants reflect infrared differently, that really shows up in the last photo. It’s one of the things I like about the Aerochrome emulation in that it really highlights the differences.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
Monday I went up to the eastern San Gabriels to see if I could get some plants in the remaining snow up there, that was pretty wild looking.
marv
Beautiful. Watching the Gold Rush (1925) with middle schoolers today. The time, if not the geography, is so perfect I think I’ll start w/ the shot of the Ryan homestead
Mary G
I don’t believe in ley lines and time travelling through standing stones, but if I did, I would travel from Joshua Tree. It is magically weird, sab. U2 wrote a whole album.
sab
I never much liked the desert. Dry and boring, I thought. Then one time when we were driving LA to Vegas we got a flat tire. While my husband was changing the tire I actually looked at the desert. Every square yard was a perfect, lovely little rock garden.
p.a.
@sab: Never been further west than Vegas, but coming from the East coast the difference between green but mostly cramped vistas and the open, graybrownrusset views of the dry areas struck me immediately.
frosty
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: We’re there now and I have more pictures of rock formations than I know what to do with! I expected the trees but not the rocks.
marklar
Just curious….have you ever played around with LUTs that simulate infrared effects, and if so, can you recommend any? I have a camera converted to 720 nm, but some times want more color variation (although dual and quad-tone filters sometimes let me do that).
Oh, and thanks for the photos. You have a way of having us immersed in the scene.
Wag
great photos. I need to get back to Joshua Tree.
cope
These pictures are quite striking. I love the desert. These make me feel very close to it even if at 28 N, 81W I am far away. I will return though, of that I am sure.
Thank you for the lovely shots.
J R in WV
I have all I can do just taking a pnoto that’s a good representation of what I see with Mk 1 eyeballs. So once you get into various filters and settings and IR you pretty much lose me as far as working with the techniques.
But the results you get with your various methods are really interesting and sometimes, like these, really impressive. Thanks for sharing.
We have a tiny place in AZ on a big ranch that was subdivided years ago, and we drive past an old mining ghost town getting to the ranch. Just since we’ve been there we’ve watched various old buildings collapsing slowly that were in fair shape when we first go involved in the area.
The last commercial building standing was the bar(!!), and when I was there winter before the plague the roof had partly collapsed, which means the rest won’t be far behind. Adobe construction lasts well as long as there’s a roof, but once those old walls are out in the weather they erode pretty fast. The old jail has been restored and looks like new, which also figures when you think of it — the strongest construction will always be the town jail.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@marv: The 5th photo with the dead tree would work.
@Mary G: Oddly enough the Joshua Tree in the album artwork is not in the park, or wasn’t(it died).
@sab: They got big rocks in J Tree.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@p.a.: What’s really interesting is when the desert and the mountains meet. The dry desert with snow in the background. Oh it does snow in J Tree at least one a year(not just the higher elevations).
@frosty: Sounds like you’ve been to the wonderland of rocks near Barker Dam. There’s lots to see there…Barker Dam(there wasn’t any water there when I went), Wonderland Ranch, and the Wall Street Mill. Even where Bill Keys shot and killed Worth Bagley. If you go to the southeastern part of the park in Pinto Basin, no rocks or Joshua Tress.
@marklar: I’ve tried some LUTs, mainly to try and get the Aerochrome look, and ended up going with the filter on my full spectrum camera. At 720nm, you lose most of the color except IR and some red. For faux color IR, just do the red/blue channel swap and a hue/saturation layer. One thing I’ve done is shoot two pictures, one in IR and one with an uncoverted camera and add some color back.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Wag: Thanks, there’s lots to see there.
@cope: Thanks, it can be really colorful, especially at golden hour, though not for IR.
@J R in WV: You can do pretty good stuff with visual color at the right time of day. The nice thing about IR, is that the best time to shoot is in the middle of the day.
In addition to missing roofs, adobe structures would need plaster put on the walls, not just for asthetic reasons, it’d keep the adobe from melting in the rain. The adobe melts in the rain, not as fast in the desert, but it still does.
JustRuss
I remember clambering over the rocks at Joshua Tree as a kid. Of course my brother got scared and wouldn’t climb down, leading to much family drama. I’m sure Dad loved us, but I think there were times he questioned his decision to have children.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@JustRuss: When I stopped at Intersection Rock(featured in a past Milky Way shot here on OTR), I saw quite a few climbers(but they had climbing equipment).
JustRuss
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: I’m guessing they weren’t 8 years old.
TriassicSands