“A Cotswolds Trail” — Two Cotswolds hikers pause in the sunlight between old trees and a wheat field.
I have to confess some (OK, a lot of) ignorance about England outside of its cities. We’ve been to the country a number of times, but that usually means going to London and then visiting a few other relatively urbanized places. So “my England” has been basically London and a few (mostly popular) towns. We’ve passed through the country on trains and looked down on it from the air, but this trip was the first time that we actually went out and walked through it. I learned a lot!
“Egret On The Hunt” — A great egret hunting in a California Central Valley field.
I photographed this great egret back in late February during one of my last seasonal visits to a place where I photograph migratory birds every winter. This bird, like so many egrets I see out there, was hunting on its own, moving methodically and slowly toward its prey. If you did not realize what the bird was doing you might not understand its behavior, but once you do the purpose of its focused attention becomes clear.
“Desert Gold Flowers, Panamint Range Mountains” — The snow-capped Panamint Range rises beyond a field of desert gold wildflowers, Death Valley.
What is the popular image of Death Valley National Park? I’d say that it is some combination of the following: desert, sand dunes, arid, empty. There can be some truth to that though it is not quite so uniform. This photograph is an example — it is not empty and there are no sand dunes. Instead we see flowers stretching off into the far distance.
“Fields of Desert Gold” — Fields of desert gold flowers and desert mountains, Death Valley.
Forgive me for sharing yet another photograph featuring fields of desert gold flowers, but they appeared in impressive numbers in Death Valley in late February. This is usually a dry and generally beige landscape (with some exceptions) but these flowers turned gravel fans and some hills yellow all over the valley.
The foreground flowers are obvious, but if you look carefully you’ll see more fields of the flowers further up the gentle slope leading to the base of the Black Mountains. The more distant color — yellow mixed with green — may seem subtle, but to those of us used to more typical Death Valley conditions it is striking.
