Last February, after traveling from his home in New Hampshire to attend a photo show in Anaheim, CA, David Mendelsohn met up with his son, Christian, who drove down from Monterey, and the two embarked on a three-day road trip through the desert lands east of Los Angeles. The idea, David says, was to simply "drive, hang out, camp out, see things and photograph them."

When we heard about the road trip, we wanted to see the photos. You see, our familiarity with David's work—be it commercial, advertising, editorial or fine art—led us to believe that the desert wouldn't be the most fertile place for his photography. David deals in bright colors, bold graphics, unusual juxtapositions and, often, just plain bizarre stuff—elegantly photographed, to be sure, but bizarre nonetheless; stuff like armchairs swallowing up people, irons flying through the air, legs in all sorts of unlikely places and hatboxes on peoples' heads. We didn't think the desert would be...well, let's say inspirational enough.

Just shows how wrong you can be.

"A different palette" David concedes, saying that the places they visited, which included Twentynine Palms and Joshua Tree National Park, Anza Borrego and the Salton Sea, necessitated a few minor adjustments but no major changes to his imaging approach. 

For example, he remained a drive-by shooter. "Doesn't matter where I am, I'll be driving and see something and turn around and go back to shoot," David says. "We did that a lot, and while we were finding a way back to what I'd seen, I'd see other photographs."

And so a colorful water tank was spotted in a desert town near the Salton Sea. "What's interesting," David says, "is that prior to the trip I'd started on a series of tank photographs. So there we are in the middle of nowhere, and there's this tank. It was surrounded by a chain link fence, but right away two people from the municipal water department pulled up, and they gave me permission to go in and take photographs."

And a vintage crop duster, now used to tow gliders, was spotted as father and son drove in Warner Springs. "The most important thing here," David says, "was the little arc of clouds."

We might add David's choice of angle was also a key factor.

One of our favorite images is the abandoned gas station. First noticed in daylight, David left the hotel where he and Christian were staying to photograph it at three o'clock in the morning. He added to the light coming from the hotel and a nearby convenience store by light-painting with a rechargeable auto light that he bought in California, just in case a light-painting opportunity presented itself.

Also along on the trip were David's D3 and D700 and three NIKKORS—an AF-S NIKKOR 14-24mm f/2.8G ED, an AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED and an AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED.

Lest you think that man-made and, often, man-abandoned, objects comprise the majority of the take, Joshua Tree provided a good share of natural wonders. "Everything in Joshua Tree is surreal and dramatic," David says. "Does someone sneak in at night and set up these balanced boulder sculptures?"

Then there's the blue nightscape, a post-processing combination of two images taken from a vantage point outside their camp tent. The indigo sky comes courtesy of an image in which David's D3 was set to tungsten balance; the campsite in the distance resulted from a daylight balanced exposure.

And there was at least one opportunity for the bizarre, as David's clever composition of the Fiberglas horse belies the relative confusion of the sales lot in which he found it. To show you that, we've included Christian's photo of his dad at work.

So while the desert didn't provide the usual color impact David favors, shapes, forms and textures took over as he used composition to impart drama and paid careful attention to his use of sky and clouds. "The sky is so important in my images," he says, "especially given my liking for wide-angle lenses. I'm always aware of the sky and how to make it work in my photography. It's the greatest backdrop in the world."

The palette may have been different, even limited, but David brought his eye and his creativity to the territory.

To view a selection David's colorful, graphic and occasionally bizarre images, visit his website.