© nevada wier 2009  Rajasthan, India

I just received an email asking me about the above image that was in my recent show Outer India at the Verve Gallery in Santa Fe, NM. I was leading a National Geographic Expedition to Rajasthan last year (great fun!) and we were photographing on the Sam sand dunes outside of Jaisalmer. It was a beautiful evening and had the good fortune of meeting a caravan of travelers who were willing to spend some time with us on the sand dunes. I photographed wide, long, standing, lying down and then.. said “Lensbaby“! So I pulled out my Lensbaby Composer and starting photographing. I decided to try an panoramic. So I shot a series of images with the idea of merging them. I knew it would be tricky but I did find two images that were clicked seconds apart that worked perfectly when stitched together (I used the miraculous Photomerge in Photoshop CS5). As I have written before, I choose not to crop or change any content in my images, so these are two intact images stitched together. Pretty cool! Otherwise there is no way to create this kind of double selective focus. I could have achieved this with a tilt-shift lens but I find the Lensbaby works best in motion situations. I love it when what I see is a catalyst for a creative image.

I’m leading another National Geographic Expedition to Rajasthan this fall. If your interested in this year or next you can get more information at NationalGeographic.com