Late Afternoon in Joshua Tree

Lost Horses Valley | C25-0006

In the previous post about night sky photography in Joshua Tree National Park (JTNP), I mentioned doing some late afternoon photography to kill some time before nightfall and night sky photography.

The image above is a nine image stitched panorama looking southwest over the Lost Horse Valley, which is just to east of Cap Rock where we planned to wait for darkness to reveal the stars.

Just thirty minutes earlier I had photographed some Joshua trees, backlit by the setting sun. But what made the image just a bit more special was the presence of a cholla cactus next to the Joshua tree. There is just something about a backlit cholla — they seem to just light up, almost as if on fire.

Joshua Tree and Cholla Cactus at Sunset | 25-0001

Before this, I had never photographed a backlit cholla, which is really one of the more cliche shots to take in JTNP, but I somehow could not resist.