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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The only body of water in the neighborhood is the Salton Sea, which you can see in this pictures just beyond those mountains. Like Mono Lake, it has a high salinity level. The Salton Sea lies directly on the San Andreas Fault and, like Death Valley, lies below sea level.

Joshua Tree National Park is quite beautiful although hot. My son and I visited here to go do some hikes and take photos and went in May thinking we’d beat the real heat. Well no such luck, it turned out to be the hottest May in years and we got temperatures around 100F (37.8C). It is a dry heat which I find infinitely more bearable than humid heat, but one sure ends up drinking a lot of water!

This shot is my usual HDR shot with 3 bracketed shots and processed in Dynamic Photo HDR followed by some tweaking in Lightroom.

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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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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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My previous trips to Mono Lake always seemed to coincide with rather uninteresting weather and I never really got the shots I had imagined could be had in this wonderful location. This time however, the weather was much kinder. As you can see from the shot below, there was no wind and there were clouds. I’ll post another shot tomorrow where the clouds are more pronounced, but today’s shot is one of calmness.

The time was about 10 minutes before sunrise (which occurred at 5:37am that day). I have this cool little iPhone app that tells me when dawn starts and when sunrise (and sunset) occurs. So I knew exactly when the sun would appear and I was ready.

This is actually an HDR, comprised of 3 shots. Processed with Dynamic Photo HDR, which produces much more “natural” photos than, say, Photomatix. It also produces a heck of a lot less noise, one of the real problems with Photomatix I find.

While I would have liked to have seen a little more of the clouds, I am happy with this shot. Everything came together for me. The composition, the reflections, the colors and, perhaps most importantly, the overall “mood” of the scene.

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I also knew that the textures of the sandstone wall and the cobble stone pavement would look great in HDR so I couldn’t resist snapping a series of shots. Here is the result.

Bikes are everywhere in Holland of course and Linda and I, not being used to so many of them on the street, had to be on a constant lookout (they are silent too by the way).

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The Arc stands in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, also known as the Place l‘Etoile. It is a really large roundabout, with lots of traffic and no less than 12 major roads coming together. Trying to cross this roundabout would be madness so there are tunnels that take you from the sidewalks into the center of the roundabout.

It turned out that our Museum Pass provided entry into the Arc itself. This means you can climb this seemingly endless spiral staircase to the top (see below – hand held). I did not count the steps, but it took forever – believe me on this. The views are of course magnificent, but . . . . no tripods allowed! This makes it so much harder to get decent night shots.

The Arc is huge, so large in fact that in 1919, Charles Godefroy flew his bi-plane through it.

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Linda and I walked and walked in this fabulous city. It is vibrant and very picturesque.

Sadly, there was a strike on by the workers of the city and there was garbage everywhere as it had not been collected. So sad to see such a wonderful city portrayed in such a way. On the train, a total stranger had heard us speak English and, as we entered Amsterdam, came up to us and, in very broken English, apologized for the garbage. At first we had no idea what he was talking about, but the moment we stepped out of the station, all became clear.

However, this did not spoil our appreciation of this wonderful city. We walked down little cobble-stoned streets, dodging the bicycles (which were EVERYWHERE) and stopping at every shoe shop and bakery we stumbled upon (and there are many of them, believe me). The bakeries were fun. I had told Linda of my favorite baked goodies so we had to try them all of course. We stocked up on things like Spekulaas, Gevulde Koek and Stroopwafels and munched our way through the streets of Amsterdam.

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Kinderdijk is famous for its collection of windmills. There are 19 of them clustered together, more than anywhere else in the Netherlands. While not all 19 are visible in the picture below, there are quite a few. I can count 13. How about you?

This shot is an HDR, but is only made from 2 exposures. One exposed for the grass and water, the other for the sky.

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There is a region called De Zaansche Schans, where there are a bunch of windmills in working order. There is one setup as a saw mill and another for grinding wheat. Yes, wind power was put to good use in the old days, kind of ironic that wind is once again a power source that is popular.

The shot below is taken just around the corner of those windmills (don’ worry, I’ll be posting pictures of them too). I loved the sky and the wide angle view of the water and house, just seem to make the composition come together for me. The two ducks were a bonus.

This is an HDR, made from 3 exposures each two stops apart.

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