Tag Archives: wildflowers

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Globe Lily and Ithuriel’s Spear

Image June 19, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Globe Lily and Blue Dicks — Juxtaposed flowers of Ithuriel’s spear and globe lily plants.

Juxtaposed flowers of Ithuriel’s spear and globe lily plants.

There’s a small valley in a local park that I have hike though for decades. Every spring I make a point of going there early in the morning when the light is still soft and looking for the wildflowers that grow there — Larkspur, globe lilies, and Ithuriel’s spear for the most part. There are specific bends in the trail where I know to look each season for the emerging flowers. (In fact there is exactly one spot where I know I can find the deep purple Larkspur flowers.)

On this visit I got lucky and found two of these favorites growling so close together — intertwined, really — that they made a sort of accidental bouquet. To my eye, the subtle colors of the globe lily (white with faint suggestions of pink, greens and yellow) complement the more intense blue/purple of the blue dicks flowers.

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California

Blue Dicks Flowers

Image June 7, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

A cluster of spring blue dicks blossoms.

(Note: It has been brought to my attention that I may have misidentified these flowers as blue dicks. I’m checking on it and plan to update. For the record, I’m far, far from being an expert on flower identification!)

These beautiful – but oddly-named — wildflowers are all over the place in the San Francisco Bay Area during the spring months. They first appear during that magical period when the tall grasses are intensely green from winter rains, and then they stick around as the hills begin to turn brown or, as we like to say in California, “golden.” While I see these flowers every season, this was a banner year for them.

I often find individual blossoms or small groups blooming at the end of long, swaying stems. I like to photograph them from the side, often with some appropriate foliage background. But this group was so large and positioned low enough that I could photograph straight down into this nature bouquet, with its flowers in varying shades of blue and splayed out in all directions.

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Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Spring Squall and Wildflowers

Image April 20, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Almost everything about this photograph is transitory, with the arguable exception of the distant hills and mountains. This is an extremely dry place for most of the year, but following wet winters it erupts into a remarkable show of wildflowers for a few weeks around the beginning of April. The rain and light in the photograph are more transitory than the flowers. It was a windy, post-storm spring day, with cloudbursts and cloud shadows racing across the landscape.

There’s always a bit of luck involved in landscape photography. We may like to imagine that we can control all of the elements that make a photograph of such subjects, but our skill and knowledge merely improve the odds. In the end, we work with what we find. Another stroke of luck in this photograph: the passing cloudburst was in the direction of the afternoon sun, so it was lit from behind.

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” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Southern California

Spring Fiddleneck Flowers

Image April 18, 2023 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Spring fiddleneck flowers, California grasslands.

The photograph comes from Carrizo Plain National Monument, but it could be anywhere across a wide range of California locations this time of year. Beginning in late winter and extending into early spring, California enters what I call the “impossibly green season.” While much of the state can be brown and dry most of the year, colors near the ned of the wet season are amazing — in the best years and in the right places the wildflower displays are astonishing.

I was actually more in landscape photographer mode on this afternoon, focusing on long views across flower-carpeted valleys toward distant mountains, as sunlight and passing showers moved over the area. But this photograph goes in a different direction, focusing up close on these flowers and intentionally blurring the background.

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: wildflowers

Globe Lily and Ithuriel’s Spear

Blue Dicks Flowers

Spring Squall and Wildflowers

Spring Fiddleneck Flowers

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.