Outside Beyond the Lens

- [Announcer] Production funding for "Outside: Beyond the Lens" provided by Visit Fresno County, home to unique attractions, California's fifth largest city, and easy access to three nearby national parks.

(air whooshes) By Advanced Beverage company, serving Bakersfield and Kern County for over 50 years.

By Hedrick's Chevrolet.

- We are proud to support the spirit of travel in each of us.

Every journey has a first step.

Adventures start here.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] By Hodges Electric Inc., over five decades of delivering innovative solutions for residential, agricultural, and battery storage systems.

By The Penstar Group, promoting opportunity and growth for the future.

By Central California's Valley Children's Healthcare, futures worth fighting for.

By A-Plus Signs, we never stop innovating for you.

And by Valley Air Conditioning & Repair, family-owned and trusted for over 50 years, proud to support public television and the wonders of travel.

(soft music) - The desert, a place of contradictions where heat and stillness press against the earth like a weight.

And yet, somehow, beauty blooms here in the silence.

This is a landscape that dares you to slow down, to look closer, to see beyond the obvious.

It is harsh, unforgiving, and completely impossibly stunning.

For landscape photographers, this is hallowed ground, a world sculpted by time and sun.

(soft exotic music) Where the play of shadow and light reveals magic by the minute, details here matter, not just the towering stone or iconic trees that dot the land like sentinels, but the patterns in the sand.

The stillness between wind gusts, the color of the sky just before it turns black.

(bright music) This is Joshua Tree National Park, a cathedral of stone and light.

Even with its rising popularity, Joshua Tree is still a place you can escape into.

I need to apologize, I've gotten in touch with my inner Danny McBride here.

Three days, three friends, and cameras pointed at one of the most unique landscapes on Earth.

We stopped here, we've got a great view of the entire basin behind us.

We hit the back roads to find stone monuments that look plucked from another planet.

- End of the day, beginning of the night.

- Our day is long when we shoot in the desert.

Take a wild ride across the remote edges of the park where few visitors ever go.

- They are beautiful, but- - [Jeff] You're getting pretty close to that one, D. Zach Allen sets up a masterclass in astrophotography under skies darker than ink.

- Kind of got a little bit of the sunset here, and that's ramping until some stars show up, see if that works.

- [Jeff] Look at that, dude.

And David, well, he becomes a desert hero after a park visitor learns the hard way that the cholla cactus does not mess around.

He just wants to look away.

- Oh, (beep)!

Oh, oh God!

- [Jeff] Thanks for letting us enjoy your pain with you.

(person laughing) Out here, it's more than just photography, it's connection to nature, to light, to each other.

And as we shoot our 50th episode in this ancient, mystical place, we're reminded why we do this.

Why we come back to the wild again and again, to feel something, to find something, to chase what can't be captured.

- You need some help there, Dave?

Here, there you go, get some dust off you.

We are in the desert.

(upbeat music) - [Jeff] When you travel, the world becomes a smaller place.

When you explore with friends like mine who share a love of photography, destinations come to life.

(aircraft whooshing) (Jeff laughs) We tell the stories of travel with our cameras, capturing the wonders of this world in every frame.

Day one of filming on the island and it's like crazy.

But on every trip, the unplanned moments we film are the ones we remember the most.

Good to meet you, brother.

- Good to meet you too, man.

- Now, join David Boomer, Zach Allen, Jon Neely, and me, Jeff Aiello, as we set out on a new journey to discover the people, places, and food that all make travel life's never-ending adventure.

This is "Outside: Beyond the Lens."

(upbeat music ends) (soft music) The road to Joshua Tree is long, no matter where you're coming from.

Hours of driving through the Southern California desert finally give way to a town that feels like it belongs to another time.

Here, on the edge of one of America's most iconic national parks, the town of Joshua Tree holds a certain charm, part old western outpost, part desert sanctuary, and a whole lot of personality.

With gear stashed and light fading, there's no time to waste.

Sunset waits for no one.

And if you know us, you know we don't miss golden hour.

Joshua Tree doesn't make you work too hard to find inspiration.

A few miles in, the terrain shifts, giant piles of granite boulders rise from the earth like prehistoric playgrounds, and the silhouettes of Joshua trees twist against a softening sky.

We pull over, no trail head, no overlook, just a stretch of desert that catches the light just right.

Well, we finally made it to Joshua Tree National Park.

I've been wanting to come here for a long time, and I've always loved desert landscapes, I've always loved being in the southwest, well, especially Southern California where we are now.

And I always wondered what made Joshua Tree special enough to be designated as a national park.

How different could it be from the surrounding terrain I've, you know, seen 1,000 times and driven through 1,000 miles?

And just like most times you pop into a national park, once we popped in the Joshua Tree entrance from the town of Joshua Tree and got over the top of the hill and got into this first little valley here, you get it.

There is an incredible expanse of Joshua trees here, but not just that, great rock formations, a beautiful balance to the landscape here that's really pretty.

And we just got here right at sunset.

Joshua Tree is massive, more than 1,200 square miles of protected desert land.

That's larger than the entire state of Rhode Island.

And with nearly three million people visiting each year, it's become one of the most popular national parks in the country.

(gentle calming music) But like so many national parks, most of that visitation gets funneled to a handful of iconic spots, the ones printed on the free map you get at the entrance gate, the ones that rack up millions of likes on social media.

People rush to get that shot, the same composition, the same frame, the same light.

A digital trophy.

Our first stop here isn't anything you'd find in a guidebook, just a dusty little pullout with barely enough space to park.

We walk maybe 100 yards into the open desert away from everything, and that's where we found it.

Stillness, color, texture, a whole forest of Joshua trees silhouetted in a palette of soft pastels.

It's a short window where the cameras shine, literally.

Today's low light sensors can catch what the eye barely sees.

But this wasn't just about footage for the show, we're all camera nerds at heart.

This evening was the chance to knock the rust off, to play with the settings, explore the edges of what these cameras can do, and just be, be quiet, be still.

Let the desert do what it does.

Because sometimes the most important part of a trip like this isn't the footage or the location, it's the reset, the return, the reminder of why we come to wild places in the first place.

All right, so we're up early.

We're in our little VRBO here in Joshua Tree.

Zach's enjoying the banana and I just had a bowl of cereal and we had some coffee and we're looking at the map of Joshua Tree right now.

I'm trying to figure out kinda where to go for sunrise this morning.

And we're gonna hit a lot of these features in the park here later on today and tomorrow.

- [Zach] It seems like you can't go wrong, so we're trying to figure out which way.

- Yeah, yeah, we can't go wrong, so we're just trying to figure out where to go.

(soft music) There's a certain kind of pain that comes with chasing a sunrise.

Not the kind that leaves a bruise, but the kind that gnaws at your comfort, especially when the bed is warm and the desert air outside bites through layers like broken glass.

Sunrise demands something of you, discipline, patience, resolve, especially in a place like this.

A lot of people always think that these big lenses are for shooting subjects far away, to bring them close, and they work great for that, especially when we're shooting fighter jets on the sidewinder and stuff like that, but when you just take notice of compositions close to camera, I'm shooting some grasses right now that are only 25 feet away from me, but the dimensions of this lens really do a nice job with this sort of shot and composition.

We end up shooting sunrise at Sheep's Pass along the Park Boulevard Road.

Again, this isn't the most popular spot to shoot sunrise, and that's a good thing when limiting the amount of other humans you see is important to you.

Once the sun breaks over the distant Pinto Mountains, the pace is set for the rest of the day.

Today we will shoot sunrise, sunset, and night starlapse shots, a full dance card, and plenty of bumpy, dusty miles ahead.

Okay, so we've turned on Geology Tour Road.

Now this road, there's a few of the roads in Joshua Tree National Park that are four-wheel drive only, high-clearance vehicles only.

And we like that because we're in such a vehicle and we also like that because it means the crowds will be a little less out here.

Now, we are still here early in the morning, we haven't really seen a whole lot of people, but a lot of the folks are gonna stay away from these roads if they don't have that kind of vehicle.

Not many travelers venture this far off the Main Park Boulevard.

Most stay close to the big names, Skull Rock, Hidden Valley, Keys View.

But the deeper truth of Joshua Tree reveals itself when you're willing to let the dust rise, let the washboard rhythm shake loose your grip on comfort.

This road takes you into a part of the park that feels untouched.

Fewer cars, fewer cameras, and yet, this is where the land speaks the loudest.

In the distance, colossal boulder piles rise from the sand like the backs of ancient beasts.

These are not just rocks, they are time made visible.

The formations that surround us are known as monzogranite, a type of coarse grained igneous rock formed deep underground nearly 85 million years ago.

Back then, magma intruded beneath the Earth's crust and slowly cooled, forming massive chambers of granite.

(light music) Over the ages, the land above them eroded away, exposing these ancient bones.

Rain, wind, and temperature shifts fractured the granite, rounding its edges and sculpting it into the stacks, domes, and massive jumbled boulders that make this park so iconic.

We're stopped at the top of the four-wheel drive road on the Geology Tour Trek.

And I need to apologize, I've gotten in touch with my inner Danny McBride here.

I had a base layer on and forgot to bring something cooler to change into, and the sun has definitely started to beat down on us.

So I was getting a little warm and didn't have another shirt to change into.

So luckily, I'm not gonna show too much of myself on camera today while we do this until I get- - [Zach] You've shown enough.

- I've shown enough, Zach says.

Until I get a better wardrobe thing going on here.

But we stopped here, we've got a great view of the entire basin behind us, the Pleasant Valley, off to our right.

you can see and maybe in the background, I'll punch in on another camera, but you can see the road that we came down.

That's the Geology Tour Road right there.

And then it's about 15 miles back to the main road in the park.

We're gonna hit that, we're gonna continue to the east, we're gonna go check out the arch.

We're gonna go down to the Cholla Garden area and check that out too.

(upbeat music) The Geology Tour Road gives us more than just dust and bumps, it gives us a plan.

As we rattle along through a desert postcard, we start dropping pins on the map for where we want to be when the sun goes down and the stars come out.

But there's still a lot of park left to cover.

And in a place this size, you don't waste daylight or moonlight.

So we bounce our way back to pavement and hit the gas towards some of Joshua Tree's greatest hits.

First stop, Skull Rock.

It's iconic, it's photogenic, and yep, it's absolutely packed.

You can see, obviously, it's right off the road, super popular spot, and it does look like some sort of alien skull meets Bart Simpson.

- It looks like the slide the kids fall out of in "The Goonies" into the pool.

(speaks indistinctly) - No, it doesn't.

No, it doesn't.

Next, it's off to the Cholla Cactus Garden, one of the spots we've circled for sunrise tomorrow.

It's way out in the south end of the park, kind of its own little world.

So we wanna see it now, get a feel for the terrain, the angles, and most importantly, the drive time, because tomorrow's alarm is gonna come with a four in front of it.

(upbeat music continues) We roll in just in time to witness something special, a classic desert rite of passage.

A couple sits in their car looking a little panicked.

Turns out, our friend has made contact with one of the locals, the infamous jumping cholla.

Spoiler, it doesn't actually jump, but it does embed barbed spines into your flesh with surgical precision, and then dares you to do something about it.

All right, so you were walking, and it just get up on your leg?

- Well, actually, it was on my shoes.

- [Jeff] Oh, look at it, it got on the shoes.

- [David] And it just went through your shoe?

- That one.

- And I tried to like take off my shoe and to drive.

And then the whole thing.

- [Jeff] Yeah.

- I was like, I don't wanna step on it.

- [Jeff] Well, did you give him the pliers?

- [David] Well, do you wanna do it?

- Yeah, do it.

- [Jeff] You do it.

- You do it.

(all laughing) - [Jeff] He just wants to look away.

- Okay.

- That hurts.

- Okay.

- It hurts.

Oh fuh!

Oh God!

I don't know, like, they have, like, hooks.

- [Jeff] They do.

- [David] They do, they do not wanna come out.

- [Jeff] No, they're barbed.

- Yes.

- [Jeff] They're barbed.

And so, well, you know, you're tough, man.

Not a lot of people can take that.

- [Driver] Oh God!

- [David] And make sure these aren't poking through the inside too.

- [Passenger] Oh no.

- [Jeff] You gotta be careful then there.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- [Jeff] All right, well, we'll let you get back to it.

Thanks for letting us enjoy your pain with you.

(laughs) All right, you guys, good luck.

- Bye bye.

- All right, bye.

- Bye, good day.

- [Jeff] Good day.

(soft music) After a day of bouncing from one jaw-dropping rock formation to the next, dodging crowds, crawling through caves, and getting our fill of Joshua Tree's greatest hits, it feels good to slip back out here.

Back to the quiet, back to the dust and the stillness, and the long unpaved road that reminds us why we came.

The Geology Tour Road winds like a lazy river through the center of the park.

And while the rest of the world rushes to beat the sunset at Skull Rock, we're choosing to slow down.

This is where we'll spend the rest of the evening, chasing light as the sun dips low and waiting on the stars to do their thing.

All right, well, the blue light hour is my favorite hour to shoot in after sunset.

We had a great sunset here tonight, but this blue light hour out in Joshua Tree National Park, it's a dream to shoot in, especially if you have a low light camera like I'm using, and really fast lenses, it can be really fun to shoot, like I'm shooting this shot right now well past sunset.

In fact, it's almost dark out here.

But the technology is helping us capture this low light ambiance so it feels like you're standing in this environment while watching at home.

It's such a dramatic change from this exact same environment we were in earlier today at noon.

We were driving right through here, and if you remember, it was a harsh top down light and the landscapes are still really dynamic in that kind of lighting.

But when you get out here with this kind of low light, this blue hour light that's coming in, we've got some pink pastels, the clouds are still catching some of the sun that's dipping down over the Pacific Ocean right now, the rocks are still picking up a little bit of pink hue, it's just beautiful.

As the last colors of sunset fade from the sky, the desert begins to change.

The air cools quickly.

That dry spring warmth we enjoyed all day slips away and out here, without warning, it gets cold.

I was just trying to do two things, trying to do two things at once, so kind of got a little bit of the sunset here, and just ramping it until some stars show up.

See if that works.

There's one.

- [Jeff] You got one out.

They're gonna pop tonight, buddy.

They're gonna be going off tonight with no moon out.

Oh yeah.

- Makes it darker faster.

- [Jeff] We're in search of a composition, something magical, a lone Joshua tree silhouetted in the foreground, giant granite monoliths rising behind it, and above it, a sky full of stars, slowly wheeling overhead.

Zach is definitely our go-to guy when it comes to this kind of work.

He's dialed in on all the settings, ISO, shutter speeds, intervals, star trails.

Each of our rigs is set up a little differently, trying to capture a unique slice of the night.

(soft music) But somewhere along the way, this stops being about getting the shot, it becomes about the hike in, the joking around, the sound of a beer can cracking open under the stars, the quiet moments between exposures where you're just sitting there with your friends, staring up, not saying a word.

Photography like this, like so many creative pursuits, is just an excuse, really, an excuse to be out here together, to share something, to laugh until your face hurts, to feel small in the best possible way.

Even in a place like Joshua Tree, where the glow from LA bleeds into the night sky and planes cut light trails across our frames, it's still magic, still worth it.

And sometimes, those imperfect skies can hold the most perfect memories.

(soft music continues) All right, well, we're here early in Joshua Tree National Park, and we're back to the Cholla Garden.

- Are we early?

- [Jeff] Well, we're a little late, actually, we're a little late.

We wanted to be sort of set up like already, you can see sun is coming up off in the distance in the valley here, but we'll get in position and get our stuff ready to go.

Oh God, I need some sleep.

I can feel it, just feel like crap right now.

After just a couple of hours of sleep, we're back where we started at the Cholla Garden, watching the first light of the day spill across the spines of these strange and beautiful plants.

There's something poetic about ending our journey here at the beginning of a new day.

Sunrises usually symbolize a fresh start, a clean slate.

But for us, this one marks the close of another season, our final scene, our final moment on the road for season five.

And there's no better time to reflect than this.

This season has taken us farther than I ever imagined, through the green volcanic hills of the Azores, to the blue waters off the Croatian island of Hvar, and into the backseat of an F-15 streaking across the desert sky.

But for all the miles and memories, what sticks with me the most are the people I've shared them with.

My brothers behind the lens, the laughter, the long nights, the shared silence of places like this.

Still, I try to be present to be here right now, because this moment, this light, this silence, this earth is a gift.

A gift we're blessed to give back to all of you.

(wolf howling) (soft music) - [Announcer] Production funding for "Outside: Beyond the Lens" provided by Visit Fresno County, home to unique attractions, California's fifth largest city, and easy access to three nearby national parks.

(air whooshes) By Advanced Beverage company, serving Bakersfield and Kern County for over 50 years.

By Hedrick's Chevrolet.

- We are proud to support the spirit of travel in each of us.

Every journey has a first step.

Adventures start here.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] By Hodges Electric Inc., over five decades of delivering innovative solutions for residential, agricultural, and battery storage systems.

By The Penstar Group, promoting opportunity and growth for the future.

By Central California's Valley Children's Healthcare, futures worth fighting for.

By A-Plus Signs, we never stop innovating for you.

And by Valley Air Conditioning & Repair, family-owned and trusted for over 50 years, proud to support public television and the wonders of travel.

(light music)