Larry Ditto Nature Photography

July through August is supposed to be a good time to visit Big Bend National Park in west Texas to photograph the desert with big thunder clouds.  With that in mind, I spent four days last week in the park photographing with friend and landscape photographer, Joe Zinn.  The clouds were scarce, but we were amazed to find the desert green and full of shrubs and cactus in bloom. 

All that tropical moisture coming up from the southern Gulf of Mexico in recent weeks had deposited huge amounts of water on the park.  The ocotillo had lush leaves, thousands of acres of cenizo and yellow trumpet flower were loaded with blooms, and a carpet of native grasses was making seed.  Photo opportunities were everywhere in spite of the lack of clouds. 

Of course, I would be remiss if I failed to mention that it was 112 degrees at Boquillas Canyon on the east side of the park on Saturday.  The thermometer hovered around 106 in Terlingua the day before.  We had lots of water, Gatorade and tea to keep us hydrated, but it was a tough week…mostly because there were no showers at out campground in the Chisos Basin. 

For us, each day started around 5:30 AM and ended about 10:30 PM.  There were no showers at the campgrounds, so we sponged off each night.  It definitely was a test of stamina.  Nevertheless, I highly recommend a photo trip to Big Bend National Park.  If you go in the summer, plan to stay at the Chisos Basin Lodge or take your own portable shower.  If you want to go in the fall, winter or spring, let me know.  Maybe we can work up a photo tour.

Here are some photos from last week’s trip.  Click in the upper right portion of any photo to expand that photo to a larger, sharper format for optimized viewing.

Ocotillo and the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park at sunrise.

Balanced Rock in the Grapevine Hills of Big Bend National Park, Texas.

After an arduous hike to reach the balanced rock in 104 degree weather, we had to wait on two other groups before getting our chance to photograph Balanced Rock.  Would you believe that one of the groups was a wedding party, complete with bride in bridal gown?  They were there of photos with the happy couple standing next to the balanced rock.  May Joe Zinn’s pony tail fall off if I’m not telling the truth.

Park Road passing through a tunnel on the east side of Big Bend National Park with the Boquillas Canyon rim in the distance.

 

Turkey Vulture preening in early morning.

 

Sun rising on the Chisos Mountains with prickly pear cactus on the desert floor.

 

A HDR blend of three images taken through the window of an adobe house ruin near the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park, Texas at sunrise.

As you can tell from the last photo, I am working to develop an ability to do HDR with Photoshop CS5.  It isn’t easy and I’m a long way from being happy with the results of my initial HDR trials.  Nevertheless, I took several shots at many locations in Big Bend with the idea that I could somehow make them look more interesting with HDR.  I will report on that later.

I hope you enjoyed this trip to the Texas desert.

Larry

  

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21, 2010 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Newsletter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.