My Photographic Journey
Twenty Mule Team Canyon
Recently the National Park Service contacted me for permission to use my photograph of Twenty Mule Team Canyon in a presentation they are preparing called Photographing Death Valley. I readily granted them permission and so, beginning February 18, my photo will be included in the presentation at the Death Valley visitors center on a weekly basis through mid-April. After that, the presentation will continue to be available to park rangers to use in the future.
Recently, I was reviewing my images of Death Valley that I had made in 2013. They were taken at a photography workshop with three outstanding instructors: Bruce Barnbaum, Jay Dusard, and Jack Dykinga. One of our outings was to 20 Mule Team Canyon, an area of eroded hills made famous by its history of borax mining. As I stood on the road at the floor of the canyon, I noticed Jack standing on a hilltop with his camera set on a tripod. Curious, I climbed the hill to see what he was looking at.
Jack pointed out an interesting V-shaped notch in the foreground hills, and he said he was making a panorama image of the hills and notch. I was so taken by the beauty of the scene that I made my own panorama image of it while standing right next to Jack. (You can see it on my website in the color landscapes gallery.)
But the panorama shot I made was Jack’s vision; I was seeing with his eyes, not mine. On reviewing my images from that workshop again, I was struck by another photo I had taken of the same scene that was not part of the panorama. It was a closer view of the V notch, and when I converted it to black and white and adjusted the tones to my liking, I felt that this was an image I could really call my own.
On the same afternoon as our visit to 20 Mule Team Canyon, we also stopped at Zabriskie Point. There, I made this next photo. I have never published or exhibited either of these photos before, but now I enjoy looking at the two together.
I am fortunate to have four of my intimate black and white landscapes chosen in a juried exhibition art at the Meeting House Gallery in New Marlborough, Massachusetts from June 23 - July 22.
“Each of Backer’s black and white digital photos captures a scene of the natural world, cut into vivid shapes where rigid lines of rock, sand and wood collide and intersect....One photo titled Driftwood at Bandon Beach, taken in Oregon, features a large piece of driftwood set against a sheer rock face. Without color to provide definition for the eye, the driftwood appears almost alien, the husk of some otherworldly creature washed ashore on a beach of some distant planet.”
