P#5 Stripping the Color From a Photograph of Joshua Tree National Park

A fisheye lens creates drama in this photo taken at Joshua Tree National Park

Rob Sheppard: This actually is a big rock in the Joshua Tree National Park in California. It's a great area for photographers. There are all these wild, wild rocks and then there's the Joshua trees too that are very interesting.

This particular boulder was shot early in the morning. The sun was up, and I just liked the shape of it.

This is shot with a very wide angle lens. This is shot with a full frame fisheye lens so that it gives even more of this feeling of this roundness and this big shape.

If you look really closely along the edges, you can see some of the stuff curving from that full frame fisheye. That can be a fun lens to work with, particularly like this where I'm actually pretty close to the rock. (click the image for a larger version)

When you're doing this, you have to be careful you don't get yourself in the picture, you don't get your shadow, or your feet, or your tripod, or any of those things which I often have with this particular lens.

Another reason for checking that LCD is I'll go, "There's my foot," or, "There's whatever." I know that that happens so I'll look for it around the edges but it is still fun to use a lens like this.

Also when I did it, I really didn't like the color originally because the color was kind of nondescript so I changed it to a black and white, and made it a rather dramatic black and white.

One thing that is interesting about this is I used Lightroom for this. Lightroom is one of the really cool programs for photographers. I think in a few years most photographers will probably no longer use Photoshop much because Lightroom just has so many advantages, particularly with the new version that's coming out later this year.

I use it a lot, I do some workshops with it, I've done some books on it, and I just think it's great but for black and white. It's really cool because you can make translations -- which is what black and white always should be is a translation from the color -- that can be very dramatic and very bold, and you can do it very quickly and very easily. Anyway, that's the Joshua tree boulder.

In conclusion

Using a full frame fisheye lens and stripping the color make this photograph of a boulder at Joshua Tree National Park dramatic.