Desert Rose

It’s hot. It’s dry. It’s endless. It’s breathtaking. The desert.

About one-third of the Earth’s land surface is comprised of these gritty, sandy seas, so chances are that at some point the avid traveller is going to find herself surrounded by dirt, dust and, quite possibly, little else. This aching, lonely loveliness has captured the imagination of filmmakers (who could forget David Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia?), novelists (Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient), and photographers.

“It’s this barrenness that is so beautiful,” says one of them, Toronto-based photographer Michael Alberstat. “The desert has wide, open spaces and sweeping horizon lines that you just don’t get anywhere else.”

Alberstat has spent a lot of time in the deserts of southern California, shooting “cowboy covers” for a prominent publisher of romance novels. There’s a lot to contend with, he says, not the least of which is lack of cellphone reception.

Most hot deserts are clustered around the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, near the equator. That means that desert suns are both hot and high in the sky. “Shooting in such conditions can be difficult,” explains Alberstat. “Not only is it stifling for the photographer, but it can also be difficult to get the right exposure. Because the sun is so high, there’s no shadow, so there’s no contrast. Everything is bright, bright, bright.”

Alberstat recalls one day that was particularly searing. It was late spring and he and his crew were camped out near a ranch south of Los Angeles. There had been a number of setbacks throughout the day. The crew had had to contend with dust that seemed to kick up every time he needed a lens change and by midday the sun was so scorching it was impossible to shoot—it kept blowing out exposures. “We were running out of time,” says fellow photographer Naomi Finlay. “We had to wait for the sun to sink in the sky before we could recommence shooting.”

Adding to their tension, Alberstat and Finlay had to move fast to capture a sunset shot following their day of shooting in the desert. “We were racing the clock and chasing the sun—literally,” says Finlay. “When we finally finished at our daytime location, we threw our gear into a four-wheel-drive SUV and tore along this treacherous trail that snaked along a cliff, with a sheer drop on one side. We got there just as the sun started to dip below the hills.”

Ramping up ISO to 800 to compensate for the dimming light, and shooting hand-held (because there was no time for a tripod), Alberstat constructed a shot with rolling hills on the right and streaming, shadowy light filling the rest of the frame. Fortuitously, just before he clicked the shutter, some cattle sauntered into the foreground (providing a
focal point and perspective). Good luck? Yes, but also
good timing and, of course, a great scenic backdrop.

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All photographs courtesy of Jason George

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Shutter Stop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. Add to del.icio.us.