Last light, behind a rare tree...

CWSkopec · May 7, 2009

The Torrey Pine is one of the rarest trees in the world... Too bad, because they make great subjects!

I captured this one a few weeks ago with the last of the sunset behind it and just now got around to processing it (been spending WAY too much time trying to customize my site and not out shooting! :rolleyes )

All comments & critiques are happily welcomed! :thumb

Qarik · May 7, 2009

hmmm..can you put a crescent moon in there? lol..that would look great. Otherwise a great capture.

redleash · May 10, 2009

Yes, but your site is looking so good, Chris!!

Do get busy shooting and posting more--I love looking at your work.

Lauren

CWSkopec · May 10, 2009

Qarik wrote:

hmmm..can you put a crescent moon in there? lol..that would look great. Otherwise a great capture.

I'll go out in a couple weeks and see if I can catch a crescent moon then I'll pop it in there and try it out!

Thanks for the suggestion, Qarik!

CWSkopec · May 10, 2009

redleash wrote:

Yes, but your site is looking so good, Chris!!

Do get busy shooting and posting more--I love looking at your work.

Lauren

Thanks, Lauren!

I think I'm almost done, then I'll have more time to get out and shoot!

Wil Davis · May 11, 2009

Good idea about the crescent moon. I'm seeing a curious effect; almost as if there were concentric bands of high cirrus clouds between the top of the picture and the trees. Perhaps it's the way my monitor is set up; anyone else notice it?

- Wil

PS: Just took a quick peek in PS and the effect is there at all magnifications, so I'm led to believe that it's a compression artifact…

CWSkopec · May 11, 2009

Wil Davis wrote:

Good idea about the crescent moon. I'm seeing a curious effect; almost as if there were concentric bands of high cirrus clouds between the top of the picture and the trees. Perhaps it's the way my monitor is set up; anyone else notice it?

- Wil

PS: Just took a quick peek in PS and the effect is there at all magnifications, so I'm led to believe that it's a compression artifact…

Good eye, Wil.
I didn't notice it until you mentioned it, but I see it now. I took a quick look at the original file and it looks like it's there to a small degree (probably amped up in compression) so I might have pumped the saturation too much when I processed it. I'll go back and see if I can redo it wthout the banding.

Thanks!

wfeller · May 11, 2009

Pretty shot. My Mom liked those trees. She used to take us kids up there every so often when we lived in SD. I never would have thought there was any more to them than just being cool looking.

I've had some luck using gaussian blur to get rid of the banding.

CWSkopec · May 12, 2009

wfeller wrote:

Pretty shot. My Mom liked those trees. She used to take us kids up there every so often when we lived in SD. I never would have thought there was any more to them than just being cool looking.

I've had some luck using gaussian blur to get rid of the banding.

Thanks for the tip, Walter! That'll save me some time from having to go back and reprocess the file from scratch...

I only recently found out just how rare these trees were... in fact I never really considered that a tree could be rare, I always just sort of thought a tree is a tree and that's about it. Now that I know, I feel like I should get my butt up to the preserve and take advantage of living so close to such a unique part of our world!

wfeller · May 12, 2009

CWSkopec wrote:

Thanks for the tip, Walter! That'll save me some time from having to go back and reprocess the file from scratch...

I only recently found out just how rare these trees were... in fact I never really considered that a tree could be rare, I always just sort of thought a tree is a tree and that's about it. Now that I know, I feel like I should get my butt up to the preserve and take advantage of living so close to such a unique part of our world!

I'll say probably

. Besides, from what I remember, it was beautiful there.

Some of the things we see won't be around forever. For example, there's been some estimates that 100 years from now there won't be any Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park.

-

CWSkopec · May 12, 2009

wfeller wrote:

I'll say probably . Besides, from what I remember, it was beautiful there.

Some of the things we see won't be around forever. For example, there's been some estimates that 100 years from now there won't be any Joshua trees in Joshua Tree National Park.

-

It really is a beautiful area up there and only about 20 minutes from home. I've been there a few times in the pre-dslr days for me and before I knew anything about what "good light" meant... I keep meaning to go again... I think that means I just figured out what my weekend plans are!

I hadn't heard about the Joshua trees... are those predictions based on climate changes in the region?

wfeller · May 13, 2009

CWSkopec wrote:

It really is a beautiful area up there and only about 20 minutes from home. I've been there a few times in the pre-dslr days for me and before I knew anything about what "good light" meant... I keep meaning to go again... I think that means I just figured out what my weekend plans are!

I hadn't heard about the Joshua trees... are those predictions based on climate changes in the region?

I've done photo studies of the singleleaf pinon pine (pinus monyophlla) in stages from flowering, seedling and to maturity. It took a few years and I got shots from as far north as the Panamint mountains, south to the San Gabriels and east to Joshua Tree NP. It was fun observing all the different stages and I learned quite a bit about the tree. Torrey Pines sounds like a cool place to spend some time. My pages at the link above are quite old. Some of the shots date back as far as 8 years. I have some that are more artsy-craftsy that I should find time to put in there.

I'd heard bits and pieces about the Joshua tree in the last year from second hand sources, but I met the researcher a few weeks ago when he introduced his paper;

Population dynamics of the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia): twenty-one year analysis, Upper Covington Flat, Joshua Tree National Park

by J.W. Cornett

In his paper he reports

"... that the Joshua tree was in a period of decline on the study site from 1988 through 2008. Based upon additional data from the immediate area (Cornett, 2006) and twenty years of observations elsewhere on Covington Flat, it appears this decline (16% over 21 years) is not confined to the study area. Recurring drought excerbated by a possible increase in average temperature seem the most likely explanations for this decline."

But yeah, that's what it comes down to--too hot, not enough water.

Here's some of my even older than the pinon pine pages, pages on the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia)

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Last light, behind a rare tree...

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