Covid Camping Colorful Desert Snapshots

The Covid Camping Colorful Desert Snapshots video features picturesque desert southwest scenery and vivid skies. Just like the name suggests, every picture in this video is a hand held snapshot. Hand held camera photography is easy during bright daylight hours, but there are many challenges to overcome when pressing the shutter button before sunrise or after sunset.

All of the images in this collection were captured during my Covid isolation camping tour, which lasted two and a half years and ended in April 2022. Because of solar power charging limitations and continually running out of data storage space, most of the imaging content was not processed while in the field. Keeping it organized was all that could be done. A file was created for the hand held snapshots in order to separate them from other projects. Everything simply piled up until a later date. There was and still is a big collection of RAW files to process and this is why the Covid camping tour imagery is finally being published in late 2023! 

After adding it up, there were about 600 sunrise-sunset snapshots along with some daylight clouds scenes. All were captured in manual mode hand held with the lowest possible ISO setting. Every photo in the slideshow is a post processed RAW image file. Out of 600 odds and ends snapshots, only about 280 were good enough to publish after being inspected and sharpened at 100% enlargement. This is not exactly a satisfactory keeper ratio, but the snapshot conditions were challenging. Most of the duds occurred when using an incorrect camera lens combination before dawn while dead tired, so it best to chalk it up as a learning experience.

In comparison, my first YouTube slideshow video featured about 380 tripod stills captured in the same dim natural light conditions. Most of the HDR bracket photos needed no sharpening at all. The keeper ratio for the tripod images was closer to 98% for both the cropped camera and full frame camera. The moral of the story is use a tripod before sunrise or after sunset if you plan to share the images!

Each slideshow photo appears for five seconds. The filming location scenery is humble, since the sunrise and sunset images tended to be filmed at places where I camped. An instrumental music soundtrack is embedded, so this slideshow video offers a pleasant stress free escape. The beautiful desert sky colors definitely make the viewing experience well worthwhile!

Locations: Angel Peak, Desert NWR, Gold Butte, Henryville BLM, Lake Mead, Lone Pine, Mojave Preserve, Mojave Trails, Pahranagat NWR, Trona Pinnacles
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