California's Route 66
05, 06, 07 & 08 February 2026
How I Created These Images
Introduction
I made these photos on a trip I helped lead with Dave Wyman to California's Route 66. We'd love to have you on this tour again in 2027, or see our other tours.
We were outside shooting from well before dawn until long after dark, shooting all day, every day. This wasn't a nerd-a-thon locked in a motel room fiddling on computers; we were outside hiking around the whole time.
Viewing top
Everyone's screens, from iPhones held vertically to computers with squinty 16:9 monitors, have different shapes. I can't make my differently-shaped shots fill everyone's screen at the same time.
On iPhone and iPad, everything changes size and gets bigger when you rotate from vertical to horizontal.
Click or tap any image to make it fit your screen. On Mac Safari, command ⌘ and + or - will change the size of the page or image, and command ⌘ + 0 brings it back to normal.
Turn up your screen brightness for best results.
These are 1,920 pixel-wide images; the originals are much higher resolution. These images will fill your screen horizontally, up to 1,920 pixels wide (3,840 pixels wide on Mac Retina displays). The vertical size will vary with each image.
Enjoy!
05 February 2026, Thursday top
05, 06, 07 & 08 February 2026 How I Created These Pictures
I left my house at 9:24 A.M. and arrived in Barstow around 12:30 P.M. I enjoyed lunch at the World's First Del Taco, and then went exploring to the west on Route 66 around 1:30 P.M.
I met up with Dave at the hotel at around 3PM, where also met Rick and Mike who arrived early from out-of-state.
Everyone checked-in and then we headed out and explored the Dixie Inn and points east.
We came back to Barstow and hit the sand dunes at last light, where I came upon this condemned building:
Decomposition, Barstow, California, 5:15 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 16-28mm f/2.8 IS STM at 28mm at f/4 hand-held at 1/15 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 8.0), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software, perspective correction in Photoshop. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
I fiddled with this a lot in Radiant Photo, Skylum Luminar Neo and Photoshop, adding color, deliberate vignetting for emphasis, erasing distracting elements and then correcting perspective in Photoshop.
I'm amused by my attempt to force order upon chaos. Correcting perspective in Photoshop works, but nothing in this town is straight. Likewise I'm amused at "cleaning up" distracting elements by using the very effective Erase tool in Skylum Luminar Neo: where do I draw the line between "distracting" and simply junk that's everywhere and part of reality? I'm an artist, not a documentarian. I'm creating a new work of art, not documenting what's already there. I use what I find as elements for my compositions; I'm not trying to show how Barstow looks.
Sunset was brilliant. This is what we saw from the BNSF rail yard, which has been in Barstow since the 1870s:
Sunset over the BNSF Rail Yard, Barstow, California, 5:24 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 240mm wide-open at f/6.3 hand-held at 1/125 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 12.4). I cropped-off some of the right side, otherwise this is exactly as shot. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
The four of us had dinner at Dos Domingos.
06 February 2026, Friday top
05, 06, 07 & 08 February 2026 How I Created These Pictures
Today Dave, Mike, Rick and I scouted conditions before the formal start of our tour this afternoon. We headed south to Lucerne Valley:
Monastery, Lucerne Valley, California, 11:09 A.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 16-28mm f/2.8 IS STM at 16mm wide-open at f/2.8, hand-held focus-bracketed sequence with each frame exposed at 1/10 at Auto ISO 100, +0.3 stops exposure compensation (LV 4.7), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add light, perspective correction in Photoshop. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Almost no one knows that it's easy to shoot the R6 III hand-held for focus-bracketed sequences that are then composited in-camera to give perfect pan-focus results.
In English, it's easy to set the camera to take a series of hand-held photos at every focus distance, and then the camera combines all these into one photo with everything in perfect focus! This works hand-held, automatically aligning every frame as it combines them into a final result, all in-camera as you shoot — NO tripod needed.
This is brilliant. It lets me shoot at ultrasharp ISO 100 at f/2.8 with superb stabilization at a tenth of a second hand-held, and I still get better, sharper, deeper focus than if I had hauled a tripod to make a 3.2 second exposure at f/16. Bravo, Canon! Nikon and Sony still can't do this, requiring us to waste time later on a computer to combine their images, and I don't know if their software is smart enough to combine hand-held images as Canon does.
This isn't 2017 anymore; today the inexpensive RF 16-28mm f/2.8 IS STM is ultrasharp out to the corners at f/2.8, and in-camera focus stacking lets me get everything in focus hand-held. Bravo, Canon!
We came back to Barstow and I walked over to Plata's for lunch — like a 5 minute walk. It always looked like it was abandoned in past years, but apparently it's really good and the locals love it.
We met our full group at 3 P.M. at the hotel and hit the junkyard. We then headed over to another motel on Route 66 in Barstow from which I shot this:
Sunset over Main Street (Route 66), Barstow, California, 5:07 P.M. iPhone 17 Pro Max 4× (16.9mm actual or 100mm eq.) camera at f/2.8 at 1/323 at Auto ISO 50 (LV 12.3), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add light. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Three Cars, a Water Tank and the El Rancho Motel on Route 66, Barstow, California, 5:41 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 55mm wide-open at f/5 hand-held at 1/8 at Auto ISO 1,000 (LV 4.3), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add light, color and deliberate vignetting. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
I love the magic I can create in Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo. Here's how it looked before I worked my magic:
As shot. bigger
I know that I can pull all sorts of detail out of the shadows and put detail back into highlights with both Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo. Exactly like shooting transparency film, I try not to lose the highlights and then I know I can pull what I want out of the shadows later in software.
Motel Vacancy, Main Street (Route 66), Barstow, California, 5:42 P.M. iPhone 17 Pro Max 1.5× (6.8mm actual or 36mm eq.) camera at f/1.8 at 1/60 at Auto ISO 400 (LV 5.6), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add light and deliberate vignetting, curves adjustment layer in Photoshop. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
After snapping sunset at that motel, we returned to our hotel.
We regrouped and headed out to dinner at Di Napoli's, which is a great place to eat:
Di Napoli's Firehouse, Route 66, Barstow, California, 6:33 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 33mm wide-open at f/4.5 hand-held at 1/10 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 7¾), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
After dinner we wandered back to that same scenic motel and snapped away in the dark:
Route 66 (Main Street), Barstow, California, 8:32 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 173mm wide-open at f/6.3 hand-held at 1/30 at Auto ISO 8,000 (LV 4.0), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software. Some fog or haze in the air wound up rendering the sky more of a dark blue than an inky black as I wanted to show here, so I added a curves adjustment layer in Photoshop to crush the blacks a bit. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
Tripods are for wimps. I probably can shoot at even slower shutter speeds like an eighth, but didn't try it. I have no problem shooting my RF 24-240mm IS USM at long telephoto settings hand-held outdoors at night without needing faster lenses or ISOs above 10,000.
Even better, here's another magic hand-held pan-focus shot in the middle of the night:
Old Car and Route 66 Sign, Main Street, Barstow, California, 8:36 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 24mm for a focus-bracketed series of shots composited in-camera hand-held at 1/8 wide-open at f/4 at Auto ISO 4,000 (LV 1⅔), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add light, perspective correction in Photoshop. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen or full-resolution 32 MP, 4 MB JPG.
This is another shot made hand-held in the dark with in-camera focus stacking to get everything in focus. My Canon EOS R6 III and RF 24-240mm IS USM combination made this entirely too easy. This system's stabilization is superb as well. It's not 2017 anymore.
Three Log Load, Route 66, Barstow, California, 8:46 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 24mm wide-open at f/4 hand-held at 1/8 at Auto ISO 10,000 (LV ⅓), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add light. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
I tried to use focus stacking, but the reality is that this log truck is lit by the old mercury-vapor light hanging off the water tower as seen above. This old light was constantly turning off and then slowly trying to restart, so only a few of my images are lit by mercury vapor, which looks white in person but comes out as vivid green on film or digital here.
The technically sharper stacked images just happened to get snapped as the light turned off, and the one shot I got with the light actually on is this single-frame shot above. Lighting is far more important than anything else. This shot is all about color and form, not sharpness.
07 February 2026, Saturday top
05, 06, 07 & 08 February 2026 How I Created These Pictures
We headed to the welding shop first thing:
Stay Alive by Staying Out, Barstow, California, 8:17 A.M. Canon EOS R6 III in square-crop mode, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 140mm at f/10 at 1/400 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 15¼), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
This is another one of these shots where I try to get everything vertical, but the iron bars aren't parallel to the edges of the signs so this is what you get.
From Barstow we began our tour east on Route 66 towards Dagget.
Concrete Mushroom and Grave, Pioneer Cemetery, California, 11:45 A.M. iPhone 17 Pro Max 1× (6.8mm actual or 24mm eq.) camera at f/1.8 at 1/9,091 at Auto ISO 80 (LV 15⅙), Radiant Photo software to add light and a little warmth. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
I love my iPhone. I shot this holding it upside-down just inches above the ground and easily could see what I was doing on its big, bright screen. No way would I have wanted to try this with my R6 III and its much tinier screen.
We continued east to Newberry Springs and the Bagdad Café.
Then we headed to Ludlow and dined the Dairy Queen oasis. I finally got to try cheese curds for the first time, which are superb, since I first heard about them on visit to Wisconsin in 2001. Hallelujah!
On to Amboy:
Roy's Cafe, Amboy, California, 4:50 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 24mm for a series of hand-held focus-bracketed shots at f/7.1 at 1/200 at Auto ISO 100 (LV 13¼), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software to add light and brilliance. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
This is another shot made hand-held with in-camera focus stacking to get everything in focus from near to far. My Canon EOS R6 III makes this entirely too easy, doing it all in camera for me.
Roy's Motel & Cafe Sign at Dusk, Amboy, California, 5:40 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III, Godox V480 flash on-camera, RF 24-240mm IS USM at 37mm wide-open at f/4.5 at 1/60 at Auto ISO 400 (LV 8.4), Radiant Photo software to add light and life, perspective correction in Photoshop to keep the vertical support beams vertical. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
I deliberately used my Godox V480 flash on-camera to highlight the sign. I used both intuition and trial-and-error to focus the flash to light the middle of the sign where I wanted it. This means I manually zoomed the flash probably to its 105mm setting and twiddled with how it was pointed until I got this shot. Notice how my flash isn't lighting the foreground, which is exactly as I wanted it.
No need to use the flash off-camera here, which would have been more difficult to try to keep it pointed where I wanted it. While the V480 has numerous optical and radio controls, my R6 III has no RF transmitter so I would have had to bring more gear or a cord to shoot it off camera.
While pointing and focusing the flash took some effort to get this effect, exposure is easy. I always leave the flash set to i-TTL and it always seems to balance exactly as I want it.
Thank goodness this is digital and we can see our results and season to taste while we're still on location. This took a lot more practice when all we had was film and we couldn't see our results until after we returned home.
We turned around and headed west, stopping in Yermo for dinner:
Peggy Sue's Diner, Yermo, California, 7:02 P.M. Canon EOS R6 III in square-crop mode, RF 16-28mm f/2.8 IS STM at 16mm wide-open at f/2.8 hand-held at 1/10 at Auto ISO 1,000 (LV 3.0), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
This is a grab shot as I walked in. Monday-morning quarterbacking I see that my camera chose ISO 1,000 at 1/10, while I should have set it to Tv mode and forced it to shoot at 1 second for several frames. At a full second hand-held half or more of the frames would have been perfectly sharp at ISO 100, so I would have picked the sharp one to exhibit. No worries, even at ISO 1,000 this looks great.
08 February 2026, Sunday top
05, 06, 07 & 08 February 2026 How I Created These Pictures
First stop: The Barstow Rail Yard and Museum:
Santa Fe Railroad Locomotive, Barstow, California, 8:55 A.M. Cropped to a square from Canon EOS R6 III, RF 16-28mm f/2.8 IS STM at 18mm at f/10 at 1/800 at Auto ISO 100, -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 16¼), Radiant Photo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
I also added deliberate vignetting to keep your eyes in my picture.
We went back and checked out of our hotel, then we headed west on Route 66 to Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch in Oro Grande:
Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch, Oro Grande, California, 10:56 A.M. Canon EOS R6 III in square-crop mode, Godox V480 flash on-camera, RF 16-28mm f/2.8 IS STM at 16mm at f/14 at 1/200 at Auto ISO 100, -0.7 stops exposure compensation (LV 15¼), Radiant Photo and Skylum Luminar Neo software. More tech details. bigger or fit-to-screen.
I used Radiant to add light, and Neo to erase distracting objects on the sides and add deliberate vignetting.
My V480 flash worked great to throw light back up at the Bottle Tree as the sun shone behind it. I left my V480 and R6 III set to i‑TTL and the exposures are perfect.
Half our group returned east through Barstow en route to their homes, while the other half of us continued west on Route 66 to Emma Jean's Holland Burger Cafe in Victorville, which had closed early for the Superbowl. We skipped the Route 66 museum and instead had lunch at Richie's Diner in Victorville, after which we said our good-byes and headed home.
That's it; thanks for reading!
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