Antelope Valley Golden Poppies Blowing in the Wind

Picture of Heavy Wind-Blown Golden Poppies, Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, California

It's hard to see in this little blog photo, but none of the golden poppies were open. They were blowing to the right almost touching the ground because it was so windy.

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve

Goldfields and Golden Poppies, Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, California

This is a good year to visit the poppy reserve. I also went in 2002 and 2005, but it is definitely better this year than those other years. Most of the flowers are located inside of the reserve, on the road just to the east of the reserve, and a large carpet along the northern boundary. There wasn't a lot of diversity of flowers, mainly I saw goldfields and poppies but there were a lot of those.

The weather was less than ideal though because it was extremely windy. Antelope Valley is one of the windiest locations in California so that was not a surprise. Surprisingly though, I was able to get sharp photos and it looked kinda cool to have my poppies flopping off to the side. The flowers are so colorful and so abundant that it is nearly impossible to take bad pictures here no matter what the weather is like.

The drawback is that there were a lot of people there. People trampling the flowers by stepping off the trails and kids running into people like it was an arcade pinball machine at Barnum & Bailey's. I overheard one lady complaining to a ranger that the reserve is located in the middle of nowhere. The ranger responded, "yes, and that's the best part about it!" If people want Disneyland then go to Disneyland. There's nothing wrong with that, but leave the state parks to people who want to experience nature without interference from housing developments, corporate interests and power lines. As is, a few miles away there is a state prison and housing developments starting to pop up around the perimeter of the reserve. :-(

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Green Not Brown

Picture: Lupine and Mustard Wildflowers, San Gabriel Mountains, California

There are a series of hills at the top of my street and once you get to the first ridge of the trail, you can get great views of the San Gabriel Mountains and valley. I have never seen it so green around here. Even without flowers, it would be very pretty. I didn't hike up to the top of the hills because dark thunderstorms were hovering in the area, but it was still a nice walk.

It's good to get out and enjoy nature's special moments while they happen because for the rest of the year it is brown in Southern California.

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Lake Elsinore Poppy Bloom

Picture: Golden Poppies, Lake Elsinore, California

If you want to photograph golden poppies this year, then I highly recommend heading over to the Lake Elsinore hillsides as soon as possible. On a sunny day, you can see cascades of orange streaming down the hills and mountains on both sides of I-15. There is no guarantee that we'll have a good display at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve this year, so this might be as good as it gets. In fact, this is the first time that we have had decent wildflowers in Southern California since 2005.

I believe the best displays are located further behind the hills and requires hiking some trails to get there. As is, there are some good displays near the road. This photo was taken about halfway up the hill, away from the crowds.

I'd like to photograph some more wildflowers this week when I get the chance though I can't decide where. I know. Such a sad problem to have...

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Henderson Canyon, Anza Borrego Wildflowers

Spring Wildflowers and Sunrise Alpenglow on Santa Rosa Mountains, Anza Borrego Desert State Park, California


Yesterday was a very enjoyable day for photography. It more than made up for Saturday, which was full of dust storms. This wasn't the most prolific bloom area, as that was a few hundred yards down the road. As is, I barely made it here in time for sunrise. It isn't easy getting up at 5 a.m. ;-)

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Anza Borrego Wildflowers

Taken this morning at Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

Spring Wildflowers at Sunrise, Anza Borrego Desert State Park, California

I think the peak of the bloom will be next week. It seemed like the flowers weren't quite opened up yet though there is a fair amount already. Nothing can compare to the "100-year bloom" of 2005, but it's still good this year.

Yesterday, it was super crowded at the Visitor Center and at Palm Canyon. This location had a lot of people too last night but it's a wide open space so it wasn't so bad. Surprisingly, I was the only photographer there for sunrise this morning!

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

ColorMakesFlowers.com Website Launch

My mom's custom floral arranging and craft design website has partially launched. I created two gallery pages yesterday and added the About Page. I finally got around to photographing her work the past few days and will be adding more to the website shortly.

Feel free to take a look at the website: Color Makes Flowers: Fresh Custom Floral Arrangements & Silk Flower Design Arranging

The site is a little more "feminine" than my own website.

Graduation Day Floral Arrangement: ColorMakesFlowers.com

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Carlsbad Flower Fields

Photo Caption: The Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch, Carlsbad, California

This picture was taken last night at the Carlsbad Flower Fields after a lady laughed at me and said, "Those types of shots won't work with all those clouds." Perhaps they should rename it to Carlsgood Flower Fields. Only a third of the flower fields have any flowers so far though. I would wait a few more weeks to go there because I have seen the flower fields look a lot better than this. There is a free Canon sponsored macro photography workshop on April 22nd so I plan to go down there again next month.

I need to cut back on the shooting as I'm starting to fall behind on my imaging as there are still New Mexico pictures from last week and Descanso Garden images from Friday that I haven't even looked at.

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

$450 Admission to Macro World.

In last week's post, I mentioned that I was impressed with the Canon 60mm macro lens when i tried it at Powell Camera in Covina and that it was out of my budget. Well a week has gone by and today I decided not to deprive myself of another spring of creative flower photography opportunities. This lens only works on the cropped format DSLR cameras for Canon so if you're a Rebel or 20D user this is made for your camera. If you shoot a 5D or 1D series then you're out of luck. Though the 100 and 150 are compatible with those cameras.



My reasons for choosing the 60mm is because I don't like shooting flowers from 10 feet away. The 60mm's shorter length forces you to get closer to the subject in order to fill the frame. It's kind of the same philosophy as using a wide angle lens in photojournalism. Getting closer allows for a more intimate experience with the subject. Plus vibration and DOF are less of a factor with the shorter macro I believe since that's how normal lens are typically.



I'm a newbie at macro photography. Ironically, flower and garden photography is how I got my start into serious photography with SLR's about six years ago. I learned basic photography techniques by shooting flowers at Descanso & Huntington Gardens, my parent's backyard and at my grandmother's house. I began with print film, then moved on to slide film. It was then that I began to understand how to spot meter. Slide film was too expensive to waste on experimentation, so I made sure each frame counted. It was around then that I got my first Digital SLR also. I figured why have re-occuring costs when I could shoot thousands of images for the cost of a couple CD-R's. So I shot about 50% slide film and 50% digital in 2002 until I moved to San Francisco and have shot mostly digital since then. It's the sign of the times I suppose that I began photography shooting flowers on 35mm film with a cheap 70-300mm 1:2 zoom lens and now six years later have returned to flowers with a digital macro lens on a DSLR.



Thoughts:

1. Use a tripod if possible unless you can handhold the camera steadier than I can. (I'm pathetic at steadiness.) I tried shooting some handheld but nothing came out sharp at 100% magnification. Focusing precisely where you want at 1:1 is very difficult even with a tripod so I can't imagine ever being accurate while shooting handheld unless I'm lucky.

2. Consider depth of field - I'm trying to learn what works and what doesn't in the world of macro photography. DOF is so shallow at 1:1 that proper use of DOF can make or break the image.

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Antelope Valley 4-12-05

One would expect that a record-breaking rainfall year like this one would lead to record-breaking poppy blooms at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. That’s not always the case as this year’s bloom will attest.

Poppies are sensitive flowers that don’t bloom when there’s no rainfall nor when it rains too much. When they do bloom, they are frustrating to the nature photographer to photograph. They don’t open when it’s overcast (the best light for flower photography), when it’s windy, and only open when the sun is high above the horizon (closed during magic hour).

I’d been reading news stories about over-crowding at the reserve this year and figured there might be some good blooms there. After checking www.calphoto.com and www.desertusa.com for a few weeks I found the reserve wasn’t worthwhile but the areas surrounding the reserve were of interest. So I headed out on Tuesday before dawn to Lancaster. There were a fair amount of poppies on J Street directly east of the Poppy Reserve but I took a pass and drove past the reserve where I didn’t see much color, and headed directly to the hill to the south facing the Poppy Reserve. I saw a camper on the dirt road and a fair amount of color so I drove up there.

The flowers were amazing there. Poppies, goldfields, owl’s clove, lupine all blooming on the hillside. I shot there for 3+ hours until it got too hot. When I was wrapping up, I met the couple who were there shooting before I was. They were from Nevada and were nice so we spoke for a while then exchanged business cards back at the car. They shoot for Index Stock and a few other agencies. It’s always fun to exchange stories with other photographers and find out their background.



The flowers I was most impressed with weren’t the golden poppies, but the Owl’s Clover. There were several large patches that could be spotted from the road. Just look for the purple patches in the distance and be careful not to trample all the flowers on the way over to them.

Bring:
1. Polarizer (you will need this for every shot here if you want good colors)
2. Tripod.
3. Water.
4. Sunscreen.
5. Jeans.
6. Hat.

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Edgewood County Park 3-23-05

A wild season: a wild week in the Bay Area. A tornado hit near my neighborhood, and rain, rain and more rain. On the first break in weather in over a week, yesterday I headed to Edgewood County Park in Redwood City to look for wildflowers. I hiked the Serpentine Trail Loop and then the Edgewood Trail from the parking lot to Canada Rd. The flowers appear to have recently started blooming. Two weeks sounds like a good time to check back.

There were patches of small yellow flowers on the ridge of the Serpentine Trail. Then on the Edgewood Trail near the 280 Freeway, there were more of the same flowers mixed in with owl’s clover and golden poppies. On a hillside on the way back down the Edgewood Trail, there were a bunch of bush lupine and a tree of lupine growing along a deer path.

Stumble It! / share this: facebook

Brief Wildflower Reports

I just drove up the coast to SF from the L.A. area. I stopped
by Montana de Oro on the way and didn't see many flowers, except for a
bunch of yellow flowers on the bluffs overlooking that cove with a parking
lot next to it.

I saw lupine along the hills and along the roadside between Santa Barbara
and Buellton. Moonstone Beach in Cambria is looking a nice colored yellow
with similar flowers to Montana de Oro. There's a beach area with mustard
fields a little past Piedras Blancas right before you climb into the
mountains.

It was getting dark, but I think there were two fields of mustard on both
sides of PCH right along the Carmel River.

i spent the 9th and 13th at Anza Borrego. Maybe it was my imagination but
I thought the verbena and primrose looked better on the 9th along
Henderson Canyon Rd. The sunflowers appeared taller on the 13th though.



Lake Street in Lake Elsinore had great poppies on the 9th. They were
closed up on the 13th due to overcast conditions.

A week ago, I was driving around Chino Hills/Walnut area near my hometown
and checked out the lupine site right off the 60 next to the Burger King.
There are a lot of flowers on the hillsides but it was undesirable to shoot.
Grand Ave. has tons of traffic, there's not really a sidewalk there and
the hillside is fenced off.

Check out the wildflower reports at California Wildflower Reports for further details.

Stumble It! / share this: facebook