a trip to Joshua Tree in spring 2009, part 1: tether unfurling

This post is the first in a series. To see more photos of Joshua Tree, click here.

In 2008 going to Yosemite I felt like taking pictures every waking second of the day, and I wasn’t selective about what I shot- everything was fascinating. I found infinite variety in the forest. The act of composing was pure intoxication.

The next year, as we drove to the desert, my perspective was different. Wedding photography had changed me. The act of shooting was only exhilarating now, not intoxicating. I wasn’t drunk on photography and clicking madly. I could wait for the right moment to get a shot.

Not that I took fewer photos this trip. But this time, I knew what I was after. I thought about my shots in advance­– planning them upon arrival on the scene, and executing them in a machinelike fashion, all in a row. Ten from this position, ten from a slightly different one. Move twenty feet and repeat. These habits were acquired while using shot lists and constantly searching for the best angles on the bride. My job had turned me into a robot operating a camera.

This may sound like I’d stopped putting my whole being into shooting, but I was more engaged with the process than ever. My self had gotten divided into two parts. The robot part took pictures, following a strict procedure. The other part was free to think. At Yosemite, I couldn't think, not in the moment. The robot was just emerging on that trip and it dominated my consciousness while my thinking self stepped aside. Normal awareness got suppressed while I was shooting, to return in the form of a jolt of memory when I looked at the pictures at home. Over time, muscle memory developed and brain resources were released back into the energy pool, no longer required for the task at hand. The robot learned to share my eyeballs with the thinker.

As we made our way to Joshua Tree, the transformation was complete. The photography robot had become the unconscious brute force in the situation. The thinker went along for the ride, gleefully shouting observations inside my skull, ecstatic with the freedom that came with not having to decide what to do next.  

There's nothing complicated about achieving this delightfully split state of mind. Anybody can do it. All you've got to do is take a lot of pictures. The process moves faster if movement and conversation are required of you while you shoot, and faster still if you look at each one of those photos later with a critical eye, hoping the client won't notice your mistakes. 

It was fun to shoot madly with intoxication on the Yosemite trip, thinking only about composing, but I’m not sure I was very conscious of where I was then. Somehow that didn't matter to me at Yosemite that year, maybe because we were in the birthplace of landscape photography, a place where this kind of training mentality felt natural and appropriate. But now we were going to new places. I intended to pay attention. I’d lived in California for five years and not once seen the desert. I’d never seen any desert. What would it look like? How would it feel? 

We made our way south on 101 to Paso Robles, then east on 46 to Wasco and south again on 43 to Bakersfield. To people who have lived in this part of California their whole lives this probably seems like the most boring route imaginable, but it was fresh territory for me. I'd spent most of my life on the east coast, and since moving to Santa Cruz I'd barely left town. As soon as we were past Salinas, I discovered that most of California does not look like Santa Cruz. The change was not immediate. We left a rainy seascape for hills whose muted green curves still spoke of water. Then we turned to the east, and minute by minute, I could feel our distance from the ocean growing. The tether that tied my heart to the coast was unfurling, and I was lightheaded with the joy of escape.

When we reached the San Joaquin Valley, the road stretched out into a flattened panorama, and the clouds lifted up. It was the moment I'd been waiting for. I dove into my camera bag and pulled out my new wide-angle lens.  

How desperately I'd wanted this Sigma 10-22 lens. It was the first time I'd ever saved up to purchase a lens for a specific artistic purpose (though of course I claimed I'd be using it for group shots at weddings). I needed this lens. How else could I capture that sense of enormity I felt in the valley, with clouds and road so long? With it, the empty section in the middle of each photo became cavernous, making tiny blots out of the cows and trees in front of me. Everything that was usually hidden in my peripheral vision got stretched out and smeared across the borders of my pictures. Shadows, sidewalks, human heads- they all became gigantic if they were at the far edge of the frame. My aforementioned robot brain kept the camera going as we rolled onward through the valley. The rest of my brain explored the reaches of this strangely shaped world made with clever glass and new vistas.

As I looked through the viewfinder, I felt myself expand. Everything that was constricted and hidden inside me rushed out to fill this space I'd never seen before. I was smoke dispersing into the landscape. My particles were everywhere at once.

I'd never felt so large and invisible before. I marveled at the power conferred by this lens for the rest of the day, especially when we arrived at our not-very-scenic destination, the Bakersfield Wal-Mart (RVs park overnight for free!). Even that sterile spot offered glimpses of magnificence. Wow, I can get the whole electrical tower, I thought, aiming at the structures looming overhead. Then, a few minutes later: wow, I can get the whole rainbow.