A weekend in Joshua Tree, and the golden-hour problem

Three of us drove out on a Friday afternoon, the kind of California afternoon where the light starts looking like it wants something from you about two hours before it actually does. We hiked Ryan Mountain late, slept in a campground I had booked on a hunch six weeks earlier, and spent Saturday wandering through the boulders with cameras around our necks pretending we knew what we were doing.

The golden-hour problem

Everybody knows the rule. The hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset are when photographs of landscapes look like the photographs of landscapes you remember loving. In Joshua Tree this is louder than usual. The light goes from clear to honeyed to pink to violet in a span of about fifty minutes, and the rocks turn into things they are not the rest of the day.

The problem is that everyone, including you, knows this. You see eight other photographers within walking distance setting up tripods. You feel the pressure of the hour. You start chasing the light instead of looking at what is in front of you. By the time the actual best frame is available, you are too busy adjusting white balance to notice it.

The two photographs I am sure about are both portraits. The first is the one above. The second is a group shot of all of us silhouetted on a ridge, which I am not posting because two of the people in it would not enjoy being on my blog without being asked. I will ask them.

The landscape frames are mostly fine and mostly forgettable. Which is, I think, what happens when you photograph what the light is doing instead of what is in front of it.