General

I enjoy the desert as long as it is not summertime.  In Arizona we have two flower seasons one in the spring and a smaller one in the summer from the monsoon.  I find that the best time to be out there is just after sunrise and just before sunset.  Both times give different lighting on the valley floor and the plants.  The best way to really see the desert is on hiking trails because I am able to get to much better scenery and formations.  I have also found that sunsets are best after the sun has been down about 10 minutes.

Planning My Day

When planning desert photography for the day most of the time it will be early in the day or late afternoon.   The angle of the sunlight and warmer colors help with the lighting overall.  Even though holding the camera and shooting is easy to do with deserts, I almost always use a tripod.  This lets me take my time in planning a composition of what I am after.   I usually use my full frame camera with the Canon 24-70 F/2.8 lens

Post Processing

I use Adobe Lightroom Classic and Photoshop to do my post processing.   I spend most of the time in Lightroom Classic and move to Photoshop as needed.  There are a few plugins I used to help in Photoshop which include Luminar 4 and Topaz plugins.    I always use what is called a smart object in Photoshop before using filters so I can use a mask to only allow what was needed by the filter.  I find that plugins do more than what is needed and the smart object controls that.