The location is spectacular. It is built on a little island (Donan’s island, hence the name) which is connected to the mainland by that stone bridge you see. The body of water is Loch Duich, which is open to the sea. This means the water you see around the Castle rises and drops with the tide.

Just a little further on lies a town with the wonderful name of “Kyle of Lochalsh”. The name just rolls off the tongue beautifully when pronounced in a proper Scottish brogue. The Kyle of Lochalsh is of course the place you go when you want to go to the Isle of Skye.

This photo was taken a few years ago when I visited and it had just rained, as it does a lot in Scotland.

That mountain you see behind the castle is the unpronounceable Sgurr Mhic Bharraich and behind that is the Saddle, one of the more famous maintains of the Scottish Highlands and a popular hiking destination.

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El Capitan is of course one of THE dominant features in Yosemite. It is a favorite piece of rock for experienced rock climbers. Rising more than 3,000 feet above the Valley floor, it is the largest monolith of granite in the world. During the summer, you can spot climbers making their way up, but you need to look hard and have a pair of binoculars, the rock face is SO large and the climbers are SO small, it is hard to see them with the naked eye.

About the making of this shot:

> Camera: Canon 5d mark 2 – ISO 100
> Lens: EF 17-40mm f/4L USM @ 17 mm
> 3 bracketed shots, +/- 2 stops
> Initial clean up in Lightroom, exported each exposure as 16 bit TIFF
> Merged to HDR and Tonemapped in Oloneo then exported as 16 Bit TIFF
> Opened in Photoshop CS5 for some additional work including Topaz Adjust and Topaz DeNoise
> Saved as PSD
> Imported back into Lightroom and exported to Zenfolio, Flickr and Facebook

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As you can see, Joshua Trees are strange looking things. It is a plant from the Yucca family and is also known by the name of Yucca Palm, Tree Yucca or Palm Tree Yucca. When you touch the tree, you will be surprised at how “solid” it feels. It is a very “dense” and heavy wood and you can tell when you touch it.

The tree seems to only grow in the Mohave Desert parts of the park, in the higher (northern) elevations.

The other thing that stands out in Joshua Tree National Park are the large number of rocks and boulders. This picture shows a typical cluster. Those rocky cluster make excellent rock-climbing areas and when my son and I were there we saw a large number of rock climbing groups throughout the park.

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You can’t help but love this place with its 19 working windmills. It provides such a wonderful “Dutch” scene. What could be more stereo-typical than this? Perhaps a winter scene, when it’s all frozen over and people are out skating the canals.

On this occasion I visited with Linda who had never been to Holland before. The drive to Kinderdijk takes you past some glorious Dutch countryside. Parts of the road is right on top of the levees, which are called “dykes” in Holland and are built to keep the water out. This is also where the windmills come in as they were designed as pumps, pumping water out of the lower lying lands. They still work at Kinderdijk and it is quite normal to see some in action when you wander around here (although there is no real need for them as a pump, they turn mostly for the tourists these days.

This shot is not an HDR, but a single image treated with Topaz Adjust. I tend to apply the effect on one layer, then blend copies of the original image together to get the effect I want. This provides me with a lot of control and avoids that “grungy” look you can get so easily with Topaz.

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This shot was taken just about at sunset, which had the sun disappearing over the mountains on my right. It caused these rocks to be bathed in beautiful soft light. I was quite happy with this as I had to scramble down to this area from the road. Not particularly smart when carrying tripods and some expensive gear.

Anyway, I made it without a mishap and got this picture for my efforts.

As usual, it is an HDR comprised of my usual 3 shots. I used Photomatix (with some “gentle” setting to minimize noise), then opened in Photoshop and blended it with a layer that has some Topaz Adjust treatment to it. This all let me get great detail, nice color and minimum noise. The little noise that was there, I got rid of with the new noise reduction tool in Lightroom V3, which I find very good.

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The reflections were SO intense they almost look fake, but I can assure you they are not. This shot was taken about 6pm, which was 2 1/2 hours before sunset. Linda and I actually went here to scope out where to be at sunset, but the conditions were so nice we pulled out our cameras and took a series of shots. There was no wind at all which is why the reflections are so intense, the water was like a mirror and because it was still quite light, the overall effect is quite spectacular.

Linda and I actually did come back at sunset, but there was nothing going on, wind had picked up and there was no color whatsoever. Conditions were so “blah” we didn’t even get out of the car, so were happy we got these shots a few hours earlier.

This shot is a single picture with some treatment in Topaz Adjust. I applied Topaz to one layer, then blended the other, original, layer to get the look I wanted. I find this lets me control noise pretty well.

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