Mojave Desert
© 2011 Danny Laureys

About CANP

Welcome to the regional group homepage for the California Nature Photographers! This group was established in April of 2003 as the Northern California Nature Photographers to further expand the wonderfully diverse community offered by the Nature Photographers Online Magazine. In July, 2005, the group was expanded to include the entire state of California.

Our primary goal is to build a regional community of individual members who are interested in outdoor photography, and who have a desire to share information, ideas, questions, locations, photos, and an occasional field trip or group gathering. The keywords are casual, friendly, and open to all.

We hope you will enjoy our site. If you do, please spread the word about our NPN regional group to other local photographers and encourage them to take advantage of a NPN membership. More On NPN Membership...

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Please send an email to one of the group moderators listed below and request membership.

Contact Information

Your group moderators are Preston Birdwell and Harley Goldman.

Please direct all membership, group activity, and current event related questions and comments to the moderators. The same applies for web-site related problems, updates, ideas, and other site related topics. You may use the moderator's e-mail links at the top of the CANP Forum page or post them to the group forum.

If you observe abuse of this site and/or posts that do not meet the NPN posting guidelines, please e-mail the moderators.

Thank you for your participation at NPN and CANP!

About the Cover Photograph

This month's featured photograph "Mojave Desert", is by Danny Laureys.

"I was born in Belgium, came to the US in Nov 1967 in Connecticut and then moved to California January 1968. I caught the photography bug when living in Brussels, Belgium. My first camera was a Kodak box camera. I did professional photography for 7 years doing street photography, fashion photography, product photography, and off road races photography with various cameras. I also worked at a Publishing Company doing table tops and B&W darkroom room work, developing and printing. I put everything in the closet for 27 years and worked for the Video Post Production Industry. I got back into Photography about 4 years ago, but decided to do nature photography in my older days and really enjoy it after leaving the Video Industry."

"Making "Mojave Desert": Since I live in the High desert, Antelope Valley, I drive around the desert a lot. Saw this shot in the corner of my eye, didn't plan on stopping, but this image was starting to form in my mind. I was already a mile past the spot, did a quick U-turn and went back to it. Tried a few wide angle shots with my 17-40L, but was not too happy with the results because of the dirt road that always ended up in the shots, took a few shots with 70-200L and was happy with the results. Converted it to B&W in PSCS4."

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