Matt, you must have noticed that everyone agrees that your black and white photos are really special. Some thoughts about the first one perhaps to light. Your wish to get advice on improving has not really been addressed. My answer for myself was to go back and look at the work of others that I found inspirational. I am easily inspired by the work of Ansel Adams and some others. I got a book from the library in which Ansel went into great detail on his thinking processes in creating about 40 of his photographs. He talked about how he visualized what he wanted to create and the mental process of which filter and developing process he would probably be using to achieve his vision. He talked about how he was feeling and who was with him. Really interesting. Its something to ring a bell inside you. Also, the website "The Luminous Landscape" which was started by Richard Reichman, is a font of information for photographers. They began asking for 12$ a year to use the site recently, but there is good value. Linda asked what kind of software you used and I was keenly interested in your response. I learned on photoshop and know fairly little about Lightroom. I wonder if it has a similar method for black and white conversion as does photoshop, with the color sliders moving the b and w tones. Well, it obviously does a great job.

I generally approach every photograph I review in pp with the idea that it may well be improved by cropping. I don't like to be restricted by any strict proportions, so I crop for what each composition seems to need. A photographer friend told me a long time ago to always back out a little when composing a shot but nevertheless I seldom heed that advise and attempt to get it right. Probably a much better chance to do that working on a tripod. I took your shots and opened them in ps because I was curious, and quite a few of them were very nearly exactly a 4x5 proportion. Did you do that consciously? I also like the 4x5.

sharing a couple of my shots from my last time in Joshua Tree, august 2013

oops

aside from black and white, you have a great eye for composition. I am pretty certain you are cropping your pictures to suit your eye, and you have a real knack for it. Black and white can tolerate some blown out highlights but we still have to be mindful of them.

aside from black and white, you have a great eye for composition. I am pretty certain you are cropping your pictures to suit your eye, and you have a real knack for it. Black and white can tolerate some blown out highlights but we still have to be mindful of them.

Joshua Tree is a really magical place. I felt a little overwhelmed both times I was there. I wanted to see everything and its just not possible in such a short time. daldds is right. Feel the place. Its powerful. You could google images for Joshua Tree to get an idea of the variety, and perhaps some things that you really want to see. I have quite a few of my photographs from Joshua Tree at studiofergmark.com

Jumbo rocks is one of the best areas. A lot of area to explore the fantastic rock formations.