Tag Archives: bloom

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Wildflowers, Central California Hills

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Wildflowers, Central California Hills
Spring wildflower bloom in San Luis Obispo County, California

Wildflowers, Central California Hills. Carrizo Plain National Monument, California. April 2, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Spring wildflower bloom in San Luis Obispo County, California

Our evening hike to photograph the flowers began with a drive. We left our campsite, picked up a gravel cross-valley road, followed another narrower gravel road, and finally turned up a one-lane track heading up into the hills. Before long it dead-ended at a gate with an opening that only allowed foot traffic beyond. We loaded up, decided to forego the main trail, dropped into a gully, climbed a slope on the other side, and then followed a ridge up into the hills.

As we climbed the flowers, of all sorts, became thicker and thicker, and before long we were “wading” through fields of them, sometimes up to our hips, as we headed toward some likely looking slopes even higher up. Finally arriving at what seemed like the likely place to start photographing, there was a flat plateau along the ridge, and flowers carpeted sections of it. To make this photograph I positioned myself so that the main field of flowers was directly in front of my, with the further layered ridges extending beyond and further up into the hills.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature

Temblor Range Wildflowers, Evening

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Temblor Range Wildflowers, Evening
Wildflowers, evening light in the Temblor Range hills

Temblor Range Wildflowers, Evening. Carrizo Plain National Monument, California. April 2, 2017. © Copyright 2017 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Wildflowers, evening light in the Temblor Range hills

On the first day of my annual spring Death Valley visit, I took a detour down US 101 and then inland to the Carrizo Plain National Monument. I usually go straight to Death Valley in a single day, but the reports of a “super bloom” in areas of the Central Coast, plus the fact that friends were already there camping and photographing, made the side-trip sound interesting. Heading inland from 101 at Paso Robles, I soon entered the spring-green hills and began to see wildflowers… and wildflower fans! After five yours of historic California drought, Californians are absolutely thrilled by this lush spring of green hillsides and flowers. I continued heading east and eventually arrived at the Carrizo, where the only thing more plentiful than the wildflower hunters were the flowers themselves!

This national monument is not as developed as most, which makes sense given the remote location, the typical dry and inhospitable climate, and the generally small number of visitors to this faculty that is co-administered with the BLM. All of that is my way of saying that it took me a while to figure out where the heck I was and where my friends were camped! I found them, we sat and caught up on one another’s stories, and as evening came on we headed out for some photography. We ended up climbing up into the Temblor Range, where there were all kinds of flowers. I made this photograph of the hills and valleys above us just before the sun set.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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Photographs: Nature

Dahlia

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Dahlia
Dahlia blossom

Dahlia. Fort Bragg Botanical Gardens. Fort Bragg, California. July 5, 2015. © Copyright 2015 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A dahlia blossom.

I’m not usually the flower photographer around here — that title goes to my wife, Patty, whose passion is seeing and photographing the very small world of flowers. But every so often I give it a try. We spent some time one morning at the beautiful botanical gardens in Fort Bragg, where I made a few photographs including this one of a dark-colored dahlia blossom

We were in Northern California for a few days earlier this week, centered in the Mendocino area but traveling from there to places as far away as Humboldt Redwood State Park and even up to Ferndale, California. Overall it was not a tremendously successful trip for photography, at least not for me. (It was, however, a very successful trip for eating…) Photography in this area is perhaps more condition-dependent than in some other places where I photograph, and the conditions were difficult this time. No matter. Even when I don’t come back with a lot of photographs, I do come back with more knowledge of the place that I can can use the next time I’m there.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Death Valley, Photographs: Desert, Photographs: Nature

Golden Evening Primrose

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Golden Evening Primrose
Golden Evening Primrose

Golden Evening Primrose. Death Valley National Park, California. April 2, 2014. © Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Golden Evening Primrose blossoms, Panamint Range, Death Valley National Park

Once we figured out that this was turning out to be a rather good wildflower year in Death Valley—rather than the expected complete bust—we began to see wildflowers everywhere. Although there were not too many at the lowest elevations in the most arid and desolate parts of the valley itself, up in the surrounding desert mountains there were a lot of flowers, and in some places the display was downright abundant, with the colorful patches on hillsides visible from a good distance away.

It helped that on what was probably our best wildflower photography day there was a winter storm that not only brought some rain and a bit of snow to the higher elevations but, more importantly, brought clouds and the soft light conducive to flower photography. As we would walk or drive along we might spot a bit of color and get out to look around. Invariably, as soon as we started photographing that color that we first spotted we would look more closely and find more and more examples and more and more kinds of flowers. What seemed like it might be a quick “stop to photograph the yellow flowers,” inevitably turned into a half hour or an hour exploration of a world of small and colorful desert flowers.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.