The Journey
1987, the year that the Joshua Tree was released, I was 13 years of age. The child of divorced parents, part of my routine growing up was to visit my father in Toronto. As an early teen, my appreciation for music was just getting started and part of my routine with my father was to visit Sam the Record Man and shop for new music that I could take home with me. In March of ‘87, “With or Without You” the first single from the album had extensive radio play, and was my first introduction to the band. The Joshua Tree came home with me that month, and completley mesmerized me. The music was so very raw, and the imagery on the jacket was something I would get lost in.
A snap from my 2012 visit to the tree
In 2012 while visiting California, on a whim I was curious if I could visit the location where the cover was shot, and to my surprise it wasn’t in Joshua Tree National Park, but in Death Valley. A quick search later, and I had the GPS co-ordinates and took the journey to hallowed ground. While I was disappointed to find out that the tree had died, I was pleased to find that the U2 community had made this site into a memorial. After spending a few hours on site, I drove back to LA carrying the memories of an experience that I have thought of often over the years.
In January 2020, I had a free day while visiting California and thought it would be nice to return to the site and take some new photos. The idea hit me that I could capture the tree with thousands of photos to build out a 3D model, and that solidified my purpose for a visit. From there, this project was born.
What is my intention with this project? Preservation.
A few years ago I came across a posting on the U2 Subreddit, showing a portion of the tree that had been sawed off by a visitor. I had a sick feeling when I read the article and couldn’t wrap my head around how somebody could be so destructive just for a souvenir.
The concept of recreating the Joshua Tree site as a digital experience is incredibly intriguing to me. I have been fortunate to visit the site twice, and the thought of others around the world being who may never be able to make the trip out to the desert can be remedied with the use of current technology. Through Virtual Reality, fans from all of the world will one day be able to visit and explore the site and unlock its secrets.
How long did this take?
Getting Close
On a beautiful Saturday afternoon, I spent 7 hours on site from noon until just after sundown. In that time I snapped 3,937 pictures of the tree and surrounding area and also took shots of the sky at different points in the solar cycle. In that time, I also captured multiple time lapses as well as drone photos and video footage.
Capturing the tree in timelapse.
It was a long and arduous process,, but I made sure to capture every inch of the tree in order to capture it unique texture and all of the hidden treasures that are placed around the site. I also took time to look at all of the items left by fans over the years and was intrigued by the stories that each piece of memorabilia has behind it. On site, I also took pictures of everything left behind in order to create a database of items left at the site.
What’s next?
The next steps are to catalog and process all of the photos taken on site, then run them through the photogrammetry software. As this process starts, I will post updates.
How can you be involved?
As previously mentioned, while on site I did take inventory of most of the times on location. I’ve entertained the idea of making this a public AirTable database that the public can view, and past visitors can tag their items left behind and add the story of their journey to that visit, therefore making a digital guestbook.
In the meantime, you can share your story of a visit to The Joshua Tree here.
As technology progresses, Augmented Reality can be used to assist visitors to the site to help tell the story of the tree’s markings and items left behind. Bridging the 3D model for tracking and the dataset of visits, together we can create a living memorial.
Have you recently been to the the site? Please share your story here.
