Joshua Tree (Patreon)

I shot these two images of Roarie Yum in Joshua Tree while teaching a workshop for the Palm Springs Photo Festival in ’19. I was illustrating ways to integrate a model into a landscape by making them part of the scene:

In the first, I used posing with many angles of the limbs to mimic the branches while having shadows intersect her limbs, breaking them up.

In the second, I used the shadows from one of the trees to cover part of her face and body, but in a way where it became apparent that the shadows originated from another similar tree.

I’m not much of a fan of having a model pose in front of a landscape.
I prefer integrating her with a scene so she becomes a part of it instead of just having the background as a backdrop.