This wonderful pinnacle is found in lower Queen Valley a couple of miles west of the Geology Tour road.  You pretty much have to know where it is to find it.  We were led there by good friend and outstanding Joshua Tree photographer Paul Martini.

The outcrop is dominated by an amazing spire that soars above the collection of boulders.  We had enough time before the sun would set for me to scout around the entire outcrop.  I took many test shots with my Canon G11, looking for the composition that struck me the most.  It was this composition that stuck in my mind.

When I retuned I found this dead Joshua Tree that made an interesting leading line into the image.  The living Joshua Tree near the base of the outcrop provided an exciting splash of green against the predominately yellow-brown landscape.  And the pinnacle soared majestically above the rest of the outcrop as if reaching for the sky.  I set up my camera low enough to the ground that I worked on my knees.  A warming polarizer filter gave the right punch to the sky and the glow to the rocks.  The clouds drifted overhead and I photographed the seen with the constantly changing cloudscape.  It is this sky that I would choose back at home to work with.

The post processing started in Lightroom.  I tried a new technique that produced a very bold image - Fill Light = 100 and Blacks = 42.  This resulted in an image that was very saturated with a great deal of contrast.  A little tweaking of the blues of the sky and the yellows of the rock and the image was ready to export to Photoshop.

Photoshop was another matter.  After applying a contrast mask go pull out details in image I started working on local adjustments.  I wanted to eye to first go to the pinnacle and then to the sky and finally to the Joshua Tree.  The first adjustment was to darken the dead tree trunk in the foreground. This provided a tonal foundation for the image, being both dark and at the bottom.  Next, the foreground are was very saturated and thus commanded a lot of attention.  So I reduced the saturation here considerably. 

Working up the image I adjusted the color of the sky to make it more complementary to the yellows of the rock.  That led to adding saturation to the sunlit boulders.  The boulders in the shade were quite red so I darkened them and added blue.  Finally I turned to the Joshua Tree and enhanced the green of the leaves so that it would stand out against the background.

The final image works the way I had envisioned.  When I shot the image I was thinking of a castle and that's  what I think of now that I see the finished photograph.