8 • LIFE
Monday, May 6, 2013
LIFE • 9
the telescope
Photo Essay
Top Left: Rhyolite Ghost Town, April 4, 2013, Brandy Sebastian Top Middle: Sand Dunes Outside Stovepipe Wells, Calif., April 4, 2013, Albina Rasmussen Middle: Beatty Nevada, April 5, 2013, Andrea Gruber Matthies Top Right: Salt Flatts, Arpil 4, 2013, Andrew Serrano Bottom Left: Mosaic Canyon, April 4, 3013, Gary West Bottom Middle: Abandoned building in Ballarat Ghost Town, April 7, 2013, Dave Matthies Bottom Right: Racetrack Playa, April 4, 2013, Marcela Alauie
Students capture beauty in Death Valley
Palomar Photography Department’s Landscape Class, Photo 212, traveled to Death Valley in April for a five-day excursion. Led by Photography Professor Donna Cosentino, the students practiced their craft through visiting numerous locations within this magnificent National Park. It was a trip of true discovery for the majority of the students who, for the first time, experienced the variety of geologic and man-made settings. The weather cooperated with beautiful skies made just for photographing, and the variety of places allowed everyone to find their favorite subject. Students photographed the lowest spot in the northern hemisphere, Badwater, at 282 feet below sea level. They had looked down to the same salt plain from over 5,000 feet at Dante’s View the previous day. Us-
ing both digital and film, they photographed canyons and playas, sand dunes and ghost towns. They photographed Ubehebe Crater where thousands of years ago a giant steam explosion created a depression hundreds of feet deep. A magical place to see was the Racetrack, so named because large and small rocks mysteriously leave their tracks across the dry-lake bed as though they were in a competition. Each semester the landscape class visits a different California location. In the Fall semester 2013, Professor Cosentino will lead the class to the Eastern Sierras where they will photograph Mono Lake, Tuolumne Meadows and Bodie ghost town.
DONNA CONSENTINO