Rick's Digital Desert

Welcome to the Mojave Desert and the wonderful community of Twentynine Palms. Ever since my first time here in 1979 I have fallen in love with the raw beauty, power, and constant but subtle changes of this land. Located in Southern California, the Mojave Desert is part of the great desert ecosystem of the southwest and encompasses more than 25,000 square miles. The climate is characterized by extreme daily temperature changes and an average annual precipitation of less then 5 inches.

Some of the most well known areas are Joshua Tree National Park, Death Valley, and the Mojave National Preserve. Other less known areas of interest are Amboy Crater, Mitchell’s Caverns, Hole in the Wall, and the Kelso Depot, just to name a few. All of these are within a days drive from here.

Monsoonal moisture had invaded but is moving on. This year we had some pretty good storms but luck was not on my side for good lightning shots. Almost all the strong storms took place during the day and when I was at work. I did manage to get a few shots of some small storms that took place during the night, but they were way off in the distance. We did get some much needed rain. The latest was on August 30th at a whopping amount of 0.15 inches. Total for the year now stands at 3.96 inches. Temps are cooling off as we transition from summer to fall. Daytime highs are between 100°-105° with the night time lows averaging in the lower 70°'s.

Astronomy buffs, meteor showers this time of year are kinda sparse. You can try catching the September Perseids on 9 September which you should see about 5 and hour or the Delta Aurigids on September 28th which again will only produce about 5 an hour.

The Fine Art Gallery contains my favorite Fine Art photographs and the Photo Gallery has photos that are slightly grouped into various subjects ranging from local getaways, weather, the night sky, and various other photos. Photos that are new will have a "New" tag. If you find any photograph you wish to purchase as a file or as a Fine Art Print please visit the pricing page for additional information. I produce Fine Art Prints on site with the Canon ipf5000 professional wide format printer. Never have I seen a printer reproduce a photo with the clarity and color depth as this. The prints are simply stunning!

Paper also has a huge impact on the quality of a FineArt print. Thats why I use Hahnemühle's Photo Rag® 308 and FineArt Pearl 285. Both papers when printed using Canon's Lucia pigmented inks produce Fine Art Prints that are stabilized to resist fading for close to 100 years for color and 150 years for black and white. This assumes the Fine Art Print is kept under glass and out of direct sunlight. You can purchase just the Fine Art Print which is shipped rolled in a tube, or a completed fine art print already framed. Large frames can increase the cost and shipping cost significantly. All framing and matting is custom tailored for each print with all archival materials and is museum grade framing. See the link to the left called "Framed Samples" to view recent Fine Art Prints that were framed. I accept money orders or PayPal. If your interested just e-mail me.

Exclusive or Limited rights are also available. Please read the licensing terms located through the top menu of this page. All photographs you see on this site have been scaled down and do not fully display the detail and beauty of the original photograph or as a fine art print. Think of it this way. If the original file for the photo is around 45 megabytes (45,000,000 bytes), I have to scale it down to put it on this website. This scaled down file ends up to be around 200 kilobytes (200,000 bytes). Thats 44.8 megabytes (44,800,000 bytes) worth of information in the photo gone! Check back often as this site is updated frequently.