JD-0005
Desert Sunrise over a Joshua Tree, near Blue Diamond, Nevada
© 1998 Jerry Dodrill

Some friends and I had taken a week off to go rock climbing on the sandstone of Red Rock Canyon, just west of Las Vegas. After a late night telling stories around the campfire I awoke early and checked the sky to see if I was missing anything. Getting up was the last thing I wanted to do, but the light was amazing and the clouds like nothing I'd seen. Scrambling for my gear, I realized I needed a foreground that would connect this unworldly sky to the Earth. It just so happened that the only landscape feature in sight, a lone joshua tree, was just a few dozen yards off. I was puzzled by the composition for a few minutes and tried several compositions before getting down low and aiming the wide lens toward the sky. Folks often ask me if this unlikely image is a photoshop composite. I always smile and kindly explain that I could not have dreamed of this. Digital Art is a fine medium, but not the one I would choose to represent the most outrageous moments of the natural world. Reality is unreal enough as it is.