Drive 2007 - Day 07 - Drives - Beneath the Waves

Drive 2007 - Day 07

article and photographs by Ben Lincoln

I had spent the night at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, but I'd gotten there so late at night that I slept in my car instead of setting up my tent. This ended up being a good thing, because my tent doesn't have nearly as many windows. The first thing I saw outside when I woke up was a huge flock of roadrunners racing across the desert. This was the first time I'd ever seen them; they chirp in a way that sounds electronic.

There are a few towns in the desert, but it is dramatically less populated than the coastal areas just to the west.

Palm Trees

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Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

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This is not the most artistic photograph ever taken, but the palm trees outside the motel in the background were the only ones I found on this trip that were still healthy-looking so late in the year, and I wanted to get a good multispectral example of them. Also of note is that from the Windows of the SUV in the lower left you can see that the glass used by car makers is virtually opaque outside the visible spectrum whether it's tinted or not. It's also dark in both NIR and UVA, which is probably one of the main reasons cars get so hot on a sunny day. I wonder if it would help significantly to coat it with NIR/UVA-reflective material (like some optics)?

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-23
Version: 2.0

For the next five hours, I drove through the mostly-uninterrupted Anza-Borrego Desert. I was surprised to see many dragonflies living here (no pictures of those, sorry, they wouldn't hold still long enough). I seem to remember seeing them frequently in rural Washington while I was growing up, but they've virtually disappeared up here. I wouldn't have expected larger flying insects to do well in the desert.

Anza-Borrego Desert 1

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Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

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An ocotillo growing in the Anza-Borrego Desert.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-23
Version: 2.0

Anza-Borrego Desert 2

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Tinted NIR

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On the side of the road in the Anza-Borrego Desert.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-29
Version: 2.1

Anza-Borrego Desert 3

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Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

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Some of the native plant life of the Anza-Borrego Desert. I believe this is in Plum Canyon.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-23
Version: 2.0

Anza-Borrego Desert 4

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Tinted NIR

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NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

UVA Luma / RGB Colour

UVA Luma / Tinted NIR Colour

A four-shot panorama that shows very well how brilliant and varied the desert can be in other parts of the spectrum. There are some minor registration issues with the false colour images, but I think the incredible rainbow of plants more than makes up for it.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-10-03
Version: 3.0

Anza-Borrego Desert 5

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Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

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Detail of a large rock formation with plants. I believe this is in Plum Canyon.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-24
Version: 2.0

Anza-Borrego Desert 8

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Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

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NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

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A 7-shot-wide panorama of the Anza-Borrego Desert. This should give you a good idea of the general colours of the area. The R-NIR-B version is something I did as a proof-of-concept for some simple image processing that could theoretically be done in realtime to let people in the desert see things that are probably plants in a more intuitive way than my usual false colour techniques (since we associate green with plants). It works fairly well in this image, but as you'll see later, it's not always effective.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-24
Version: 2.0

Anza-Borrego Desert Canyon

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I found this canyon in the middle of the desert, and shot a ludicrously large and time-consuming (12-shot) panorama in an attempt to capture its scale. I actually did this one multispectrally, but the NIR and UVA shots are full of hotspots and don't reveal anything extra about the canyon.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-25
Version: 2.0

Around noon, I passed through an area that reminded me of Badlands National Park, although not on that same impressive scale.

Badlands-esque Terrain, Anza-Borrego Desert, California

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NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

UVA Luma / RGB Colour

UVA Luma / Tinted NIR Colour

R-NIR-B

A 5-shot panorama taken just east of the Salton Sea (visible in the distance). This is the second desert image where I experimented with a false-colour version that uses near infrared as the green channel in an attempt to make plant life stand out in a way that's intuitive to people. As you can see, in this case it doesn't seem to work as well as having the plants highlighted in red.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-10-01
Version: 3.0

Multicoloured Hill

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Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

NIR-R-B

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NIR-RGB-UVA

NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

Areas of different luminosity (brightness/darkness) will often indicate that there is something more to be seen outside the visible spectrum.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-26
Version: 2.0

Soon after the Badlands-like terrain, I reached the Salton Sea. I haven't visited the Great Salt Lake or the Dead Sea, but Salton Sea is by far the saltiest body of water I've ever seen with my own eyes. The "sea smell" was overpowering - many times greater than at the Pacific Ocean along the west coast of America. I wonder if the Badlands terrain just to the west was created by the Salton Sea in the distant past?

The Salton Sea

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Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

NIR-R-G

This was well before I had any neutral-density filters, so the false colour versions were mostly speckles of light that didn't register correctly between shots. I've included the NIR-R-G version because I thought it was interesting that there seems to be some microscopic plant life doing very well for itself on the rocks of this incredibly salty body of water.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-26
Version: 2.0

After stopping briefly at Salton Sea, I continued northeast on Box Canyon Road, which I thought had some excellent scenery. If you are ever in the area (or anywhere in the desert, really), and see a sign that says "soft shoulder", do not drive off of the paved roadway. There were a lot of parts of this road that I really wanted to get pictures of, but they aren't here because the first time I parked on the soft shoulder to take photographs, I almost couldn't get back onto the road. My car's left wheels were literally right next to the pavement, but the extremely low humidity turned the sand into fine dust with almost no traction. I have a lot of practice driving in the snow, so I used the "rock the car forward and back to build up momentum" technique to get out of it eventually. I was glad that worked, because I didn't want to lose credibility with the people of the desert by having to call a tow truck to move my car two meters to the left. Maybe if you are driving a vehicle with four-wheel-drive and off-road tires, it's not so much of a problem.

Anza-Borrego 15

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Tinted NIR

This skeletal tree is typical of the plants you'll see here, evolved to live in the low humidity. The wind was blowing significantly so the UVA version is too blurry to present and false colour doesn't register correctly.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-26
Version: 2.0

Anza-Borrego 17

R-G-B

Tinted NIR

Tinted UVA

G-B-UVA

Another ocotillo growing on the side of a hill in the desert, with some more varied local plant life.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-27
Version: 2.1

Later in the afternoon, I came to Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua Tree straddles the division between the Mojave Desert (which I would visit again on the thirteenth day of this trip during the homeward part of the loop) and the Sonoran Desert. I couldn't find a good map that showed where in the park the division occurs, but there's a map about 2/3 of the way down this page that shows the four major deserts of North America for reference. Joshua Tree itself has informational displays that provide more information about this, but they don't seem to be available online.

Joshua Tree National Park (Handheld)

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Various handheld images from Joshua Tree National Park.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Various
Filters: LDP CC1
Date Processed: 2008-03-23
Version: 1.0

Cholla Cactus

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NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

Joshua Tree National Park is full of cholla cactus fields. This one lets us see that even though to our eyes cacti look like they're dying as fall approaches, in other parts of the spectrum it's more like how we see deciduous trees in autumn.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm (Probably)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-27
Version: 2.0

Joshua Tree 3

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Tinted NIR

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NIR Luma / RGB Colour

NIR Luma / Tinted UVA Colour

This is an actual Joshua Tree, for which the National Park is named. They grow quite tall for something in the desert. Like other desert plants, it's fascinating to see how evolution will shape living forms to fill a niche differently depending on the specifics of its environment.

Date Shot: 2007-09-06
Camera Body: Nikon D70 (Modified)
Lens: Nikon Series E 28mm (Probably)
Filters: Standard Set
Date Processed: 2009-03-27
Version: 2.0

I made it within a few miles of the border between California and Arizona before calling it a night.

Date: 6 September 2007
Starting Mileage: 64357
Ending Mileage: 64649
Distance Travelled (Day): 292 miles
Distance Travelled (Trip): 2295 miles
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Day): 18.3
Gallons of Fuel Purchased (Trip): 77.9

GPS Map of Day 7

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