cacti; palms; house; garden; desert; dry; save; water saving; old; striking

Spending the week working in a boatyard here in Southern California I was delighted when the direction turned to a nautical theme.

Working the daytime hours in the yard the vessels are stacked together side by side on jack-stands like row houses in an urban landscape. The often not seen undersides of boats balanced on wood blocks created lots of options for a different perspective on a familiar subject.

In the end, it was not these boats that have surrounded me all week, but the distance perspective that held the most attraction as I left for the day. Choosing not the bottom of the boat which I have been so focused on all week, but the tips of the masts instead.

Early on in the “Game,” responding to the previous image, I found a house where the front door was almost impossible to find it was so buried in cacti. Driving around one day many moons later, I saw another house buried with cacti and palms. This house needed early morning bright sun because I wanted to shoot it with digital infrared. Infrared rays are strongest at dusk and dawn. I was up at sunrise to shoot it. Color didn’t make it look any better. Black and white digital infrared was perfect. I could make the shot very contrasty with a deep black sky. And unlike infrared film, you could burn-in those highlights without getting any halos glowing around the bright areas of pure white. The morning I shot this there was a clear sky. Today it was muddy grey, after a well-needed rainfall. You have to love that digital infrared. It takes a special camera where the infrared filter over the sensor has been removed. That sensor blocks the infrared rays giving you clean color images.