There are so many subjects to focus on within the genre of Landscape Photography. Whether you are into oceans, deserts, huge mountains, subject matter abounds, and the creative pursuit really only ends where your mind begins. I for one, love it all and given the opportunity, you will find me capturing light wherever and however it comes my way! However, one pursuit has really taken a foothold in my creative endeavors; Wildflowers! I absolutely will go to the ends of the earth to chase rare super blooms and especially rare desert flowers.
Wildflowers represent to me something fleeting, yet recklessly beautiful! The myriad of colors and everything about where, how and why they bloom can be an all-consuming and mind-numbing challenge to attempt to get right. Whether it be multiple drought years, back to back, too much rain, too cold, not enough humidity, too wet followed by too much cold or simply missed opportunities; Wildflowers can be the toughest of subjects to photograph.
In particular, desert wildflowers really excite me! The desert is almost the kind of place where you least expect to find flowers and most often is the case, you won’t ever see them. If you are patient, and pay extra close attention, you will get a front row seat to a spectacle unlike you have ever seen before! Whether they are Sand Verbena, Yellow Bee Weed, California Poppies, Brittle Brush, Mexican Poppies, Owls Clover or Arizona Lupine, I have yet to tire of them and many others that may treat you with a rare glimpse into their shy yet brief world.
I can recall one recent event lasting only days in which I had waited eight long years to see the Sand Verbena in full bloom. A delicate little bloom that sits in clusters close to the ground in sandy dunes, its blooms delicate, purple and a smell so sensual that you may just want to bathe in it while lying in a field of them. I had tracked weather for many years hoping to one day catch it in these secluded little stretches of desert. When they finally bloomed, I can remember arriving just one day late. I was literally heartbroken to see these little desert gems sprawling out over the desert floor in a fantastic display of super bloomed beauty. The small purple petals mostly fallen in a dense carpet of wilted blossoms at the seeded feet of each plant. I can remember how dejected I felt, after so many years of vigilant effort only to be too late.
If anything, this event renewed my vigilance and my attention to detail. I knew that if I was to catch this rare scene that I must watch carefully and when peak bloom was close next time, that I must go each and every day in order to capture the crescendo of the peak bloom in all of its glory! I watched the weather each year to no avail, as a general, there simply wasn’t enough rain falling at the right time in order for me to see this bloom occur. Then one spring, three years later a rare spring storm settled over the dunes and slowly soaked the ground for three days straight! I knew then that the stage was set and that we now only needed two small spaced apart rainfalls in order for this event to take hold. After waiting a week, I ventured out to the desert and behold, green shoots of grass began to cover the hillsides! This is when I knew that we were about to experience something special. Over the course of the next eleven weeks I visited weekly, watching the progress of their growth. I cataloged the growth rates, the rain that fell and I knew based upon where they were in their development, exactly when they were due to bloom! I meticulously followed each day of growth as the peak bloom day neared. It was so exciting, yet nerve wracking to know that a severe wind or small flood could take them out at any moment, yet I persisted and continued to visit them each day. The day before peak bloom everything was poised perfectly, the young blooms were all just about to burst open, I even thought that it may happen that night, however early the next morning, I was there to witness everything peak out in a vivid display of purple! The flowers were vibrant, tiny little gems against the sand, and I sat with them all day as the evening sun began to touch the petals. A beautiful set of monsoonal storm clouds formed and revealed one of the most perfect shows of colored light to go along with this perfect scene that lay before me. That afternoon, I sat there and snapped memory card after memory card plumb full of exciting and different variations of light and compositions. Finally! I had captured Sand Verbena in peak bloom with epic light!
This is but one of my wild stories about chasing wildflowers and this repeats on and on and on with me. I think that many of my friends most certainly think that I am crazy, however chasing wildflowers is truly such a magical pursuit. You really never know when they will bloom, and you never know what will bloom. About the best that you can do is watch them and learn these little areas where they call home. Continuing to watch these places as the years go by and remaining diligent is a surefire way to one day, having everything go just right and you will see them in all their glory!
The funny thing about super blooms is that they are so unpredictable and what makes them so fun is that when you see one for the first time, you would never imagine how it would be possible to see such a profuse bloom with the incredible vibrance, array and saturation of colors within them. The first time that I saw a super bloom was in the Carrizo Plains in central Western California. The hills were glowing with vibrant yellow, purple, orange and crimson! I couldn’t half believe what my eyes were actually seeing. You almost felt like your eyes were playing tricks on you, yet there you are seeing and breathing them in! Butterflies, birds and wonderous skies in a real-life make-believe world. I remember hiking up a huge ridgeline all alone on a sunny day with a bunch of cumulus clouds rolling by overhead. Each step revealed a new fold in the land and with it another dimension of color to explore. The patterns of color began to play tricks on me. Depth perception, dimension, they all became so overtly skewed and all I could do at times was simply to stand there in awe!
The funny part in all of this is that this land is primarily grassland with interspersed ranches who have cattle grazing allotments. During most years, this country is barren, brown, dead looking wasteland. There would be very little if any appeal for anyone to actually visit this place on an ordinary year. Yet given a rare and concise set of conditions that may not come along but once in a decade or even longer, you may just be fortunate enough to bear witness to just such a show of the natural world and its ability to wow you! Over the years, I have come to look forward to seeing which regions bloom according to precipitation and winter melt snow off time periods. These periods often correlate to when and if a certain type of flower will even bloom and of course, even elevation plays a crucial factor in all of this.
When all of the conditions come together just right, you almost have to pinch yourself to make sure that you’re actually in the moment! Where timing, preparation and technique really play crucial roles! Over the years, I have paid much attention to my technique and really engineering my photographs in a way that I know will deliver the results I expect from myself once I am in the under pressure to perform. Such techniques as focus stacking are imperative to get perfect. Once you are back in the studio and the flowers are past peak, it’s all over and there’s no redoes. This added pressure is something that I actually enjoy, however the one enemy of any wildflower photographer is the wind. The wind can be your literal arch nemesis when shooting wildflowers! To this day, I’m not sure there is a greater evil that walking upon the perfect composition in perfect peak bloom only to have it be windy and blowing your subject matter all over the place. This has happened to me on way more occasions than I care to admit and as much as it pains me, I still try to make images work, although I realize that these attempts are futile. Almost as if reminders of how beautiful it was, only to realize there isn’t a single useful file in the entire bunch of them.
Alas, this is nature and she gives much more than she takes. We are but simple visitors here in this realm of natural beauty. Often, I am simply happy to be there and many times, I have simply sat in places to admire at the massive innerworkings of nature that go by us. Sometimes it is important to sit back and “smell the flowers”. As much as I anticipate the capture of a special shot, I will admit that in certain moments, I like to just breathe and be. Taking in such sights has a way of replenishing our spirits, rejuvenating our souls and feeding us a sort of energy that cannot be garnered in any other fashion. I consider myself fortunate to know these simple pursuits within nature, while the world races by with little knowledge to these events; I am able to take inventory on what is truly important to me and feel alive in these moments!
I am of the opinion that no matter what you enjoy photographing the most, that at some point in time, you will cross paths with and incredible wildflower bloom and when you do, it will take your breath away as it does mine. In those moments, maybe you will think about these little jewels in a different way, maybe you will wonder at what had to occur in order for them to be there that year and you in that place with them in that moment. Either way, they are a marvel of nature and certainly they have captivated my mind. I hope that you too find the joy and beauty of wildflower blooms, as I believe they are part of the earths gift to us to remember what we have here, how fragile and delicate we are and yet we persist. Wildflowers are like that of a promise of a better tomorrow and hope, a hope that we as people and a race have the ability to be more like them and rise up to bloom to our own full potential.
Hidden Mountain By Marlon Holden Fine Art