The 2012 Joshua Tree Fine Art Festival is coming up next weekend.  The dates are Friday, April 6 to Sunday, April 8.  I’m excited to be returning and catching up with old friends.  This is the first art festival I ever did and so returning is like a homecoming.  The festival is at the Oasis Visitor Center in Twentynine Palms, CA.  The hours are 9:00 to 5:00.  Come on out and see some great art.

I’ll be showing some old favorites along with some new photographs I’m very excited about.  As far as the old favorites go I’m planning on showing Virgin River and the Watchman from Zion National Park.

This has proved to be my most popular photograph and has won awards.  It was captured on Thanksgiving day back in 2008.  I was in Zion with my wife and daughter for the Thanksgiving weekend.  I slipped out for this sunset and caught a beauty.  Beginners luck!  I’ve returned many times but never with light this good.  (By the way, to get a better view of the photographs you can enlarge them by clicking on them.)

To go along with the Watchman is another photograph taken that same weekend along the Riverside Walk to the Gateway to the Narrows.  When my family is with me we always do this walk.  It’s our favorite – for obvious reasons.

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The car effortlessly follows the graceful curves of the road. I sit, relaxed, tranquil, at peace, hands resting gently on the steering wheel, more a passenger, an observer. The car, the road, the deep gorge, the gibbous moon overhead, the moonlight reflecting from the river below, the driver – all are in blissful harmony. The pavement with its stripes and multi-colored retreating spots of light looms out of the darkness, dim in the distance and growing in intensity as it approaches, becomes clear for a brief moment and then disappears underneath me into nothingness, eternity. I feel as though I have swallowed it up, absorbed the whole intimate scene into my body, fusing it into the oneness I feel.

I just set up a page for Ralph Nordstrom Photography in Facebook.  I invite you to become a fan and join in the adventure.  Here’s the link.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ralph-Nordstrom-Photography/112254382772

Announcing the February Print of the Month – Upper Antelope Canyon 4. 

Nearly every landscape photographer aspires to photograph the Upper and Lower Antelope Canyons.  And thousands have.  For the February Print of the Month I have chosen a photograph I took back in February of last year.  I think it’s different from the typical Antelope Canyon photograph you see – no shaft of light, no tortuous corridor, but rather a glorious, dramatic portal into another existence. 

Upper Antelope Canyon #4 (2008)

Upper Antelope Canyon #4 is available for the month of February, 2009 for 1/3 the normal price.  This applies to 16X20 open edition prints, both matted and framed. 

Click here for more Print of the Month photographs. 

Click here to go to the Gallery.

I certainly don’t want to presume to hold myself up as the definitive expert in shooting Antelope Canyon but I wouldn’t mind sharing my thoughts and welcome feedback from anyone who has shot there and has similar or dissimilar impressions.

Anyone who has been to Antelope Canyon in northern Arizona just outside Page knows there are two canyons - Upper and Lower.  They are about five miles apart.  The two canyons are distinctly different.  Let’s start with Upper.

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