Exhibition Without Walls: Desert Landscape Photography

Picassa's editing features make it easy for anyone to alter and to improve their digital photographs. And that's what I've been up to. Editing photos from our visit to the Coachella Valley Fringe Toad Lizard Preserve in Desert Hot Springs, California with my family. That oasis surrounded by wilderness is where David and I did a seven mile hike one morning while the kids slept in. It's also where we visited at dusk on New Year's Eve, my birthday. I'm 45.

The usual tools: crop, straighten, sharpen, saturate,...

...add highlights, fill light, shadows, or soft focus and shading may be used to enhance an image.

Since my 2001 computer died, however, I uploaded a 3.9 version of Picasa onto my laptop and I've been messing around with many other photo-editing tools that come with Picnic including:

...museum matte and...


..."duo-tone."

This is my favorite desert image due to my angle-of-view and composition. Starting at the bottom right side of the photo, the rippling sand leads ones eye back to the chiseled mountain range, over to the right and up the mesquite. The "tint," "matte," and "pencil sketch" features produce an oil pastel look adding texture and more details than I noticed when I was actually there.

The "pencil sketch" feature delineates the spaces and forms in this desert image.

Simple delicate lines and a cobalt tint captures the grace of the hawk on the shrub.

Purists might say that a good photo doesn't need altercation. But I say, why not mess around, enhance, and have fun with your photographs? All ages may use their photography as a form of meditation; as a means to engage your brain creatively; or as art therapy.

View of an oasis from an arroyo,

b&w pencil sketch photograph

Seems like this image is a movie still and the hawk, featured in "vignette" will aloft shortly to capture its prey.

HDR-ish effect is like the sharpen feature stoked on Pete's coffee and it makes the subject have a three dimensional quality.

Blurry, the reflection of palm trees combined with the HDR-ish effect emphasizes contrasts and textures in the image above.

The "1960's" and "Lomo-ish" features combine to achieve an "Apocalypse Now" look visible in some scenes of Coppola's famed movie.

Sometimes involuntary movement of your camera creates a streak of light in low light situations. That mistake combined with the "Lomo-ish" effect and an altercation of the color, made this photo slightly different and more interesting than the same one above it.

It was getting dark in the park, past closing. Cecil and I ran to catch up with David and Chet. Apparently the Naturalist was hassling Young O, who had remained in the Eurovan obsessively reading. No worries. I got my desert fix for my birthday and more landscape art photography to play with.