Hasselblad 500 & Joshua Tree National Park
Ever since I was 12, long before I had any knowledge of national park, Joshua trees were a part of my consciousness. I’m guessing that like many other Gen Xers, my first introduction to a Joshua Tree was from the cover of the U2 album released in March 1987. I remember getting the cassette as a birthday gift from a classmate a year or two later. Then, 30 years later, I saw the band perform that album in its entirety at Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, with a Joshua tree dominating the stage background.
This past March, I traveled to Joshua Tree National Park, which had long been on my bucket list, during a two-week trip that took me from New England to Chicago for a few days and then, by train, from Chicago to the Southwest and onward to Southern California. Joshua Tree NP would come at the tail end of the trip, where we fit in two visits to the park while staying in Palm Springs.
Joshua Tree NP left me absolutely speechless. While that iconic album cover gave me a sense of what to expect in terms of the trees themselves, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for seeing them in person. Absolutely other-worldly. And for this trip, I knew I wanted to photograph the park on both film and in digital. The Hasselblad 500 would definitely be a traveling companion for this trip. And damn, I’m so glad I brought it along! I used three different film stocks in the park: Kodak Ektar 100, Ilford HP5 (black and white), and Kodak Portra 400.
