We rose before the sun to catch that early morning glow across the desert. It was freezing cold as it was the middle of winter in the USA. Driving out into the Joshua Tree National Park in the dark was exciting and a little nerve racking as we arrived to our Airbnb late the night before so had no time to scope out the location for our sunrise shoot. Good old google search helped us find a easy to reach amazing boulder location that was not far from the entrance of the park and a short walk from the car with all our products. Arriving into the camp ground surrounded by huge boulders was breath taking.
We quickly jumped out and ran around looking for the perfect boulder to lay our Lilac Rug on for the first shot. Our Beautiful muse Cami changed out of her big warm coat into a cotton jumpsuit & vintage cowboy boots, she was such a trooper braving the icy cold winds while we were all rugged up in beanies and big jackets. We battled the elements up on the boulder as the wind whipped up the edges of the picnic rug and tassels, Cami tried to hold down the tassels with her boots while effortlessly looking like a dream.
As the golden rays of the morning sun crept over the hills, everywhere we tuned the landscape blew us away with its beauty, the silence of the desert has a magic about it.
Cami’s boyfriend Luke joined the setting for some dancing as the sun warmed our faces and filled up the valley with light.
We were also shooting our new Throws campaign at the same time so we flipped between products to get some of the shots in the desert amongst the epic Joshua Trees.
The next morning was another early rise to catch the soft light, we had a vision for a dreamy bed set up in the desert scape. An air bed was all we could manage and the pump to blow up the mattress was not playing along with our tight timing for lighting. We finally got the airbed blown up and raced it out to set it all up. There’s so much planning that goes on behind the scenes for a single shot, this was the case … make the bed, fluff the doona, poor the wine make sure the strawberries are sitting nice, oh no look at all our foot prints in the sand around the bed! The wind was against us again and it was a struggle to get our drone into place as the wind keep blowing it around, all we wanted was one shot but the lighting wasn’t great so we missed that opportunity.
The desert sure did put on a show for us and we battle the harsh environments but the beauty of this magical National Park was worth all the wind burn, it was truly an enchanting place for our Dusty Skies collection to come to life.
