Flowers

Faces Full of Sunshine

Sunset over Sunflower Field Bay Area, California “If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” -Roald Dahl I’ve always loved sunflowers, ever since I was a kid, and photographing them was towards the top of my list. Last year was filled with beautiful sunflower plants but no sunsets to go with them. This year, despite a severe drought in CA, we’ve had a whole slew of nice sunsets. A week earlier I witnessed a stunning sunset at a different, slightly less alive, sunflower patch. I had visited this field a few weeks earlier and arrived to find no sunflowers — we were a few weeks early! Hoping that the sunflowers would be in their prime, Willie and I found the sunflowers exactly as we had hoped — alive, perky, and lookin’ good! The hardest part? ... deciding which patch of flowers we wanted to shoot! When we arrived the clouds looked fairly thin to the west but sure enough, just as the sun began to set, the clouds (and Ryan Engstrom) showed up! I loved how the orange sky mimicked the yellow sunflowers. This patch of flowers also had little yellow “noses”, which I thought made the flowers look like smiling faces! What do you see when you look at the sunflowers? Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8 ED-IF AF-S: 18mm, f/9, 1/25 sec, ISO 500

Twilights Painting

Indian Paintbrush at Twilight Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington I’ve been wanting to visit Mt. Rainier for a number of years. When the snow melts around the dormant volcano, wildflowers pop up everywhere. Fields and fields and fields of wildflowers, so much that it often just looks like sheets of color. The wildflowers bloom in August every year, but some years have more flowers than others and it’s all dependent upon how much snow the area gets and when it melts. The winter was a nice wet one, and Willie and I had high hopes that the wildflowers would be out in full force. Unfortunately Mama Nature had different plans. The endless fields of flowers we wanted just weren’t there. We found a patch of flowers here and a patch of flowers there. This particular patch was one such example and in this little area we saw mostly Indian Paintbrush and Purple Lupine. We hiked up the mountain early one morning, knowing that clear skies meant our only chance at a nice photo would happen at twilight, before the sun came up and while it was still “blue hour”. We went to our trusty “Paintbrush Field” as we called it, and used the beautiful red flowers as the foreground, while the massive Mt. Rainier towers behind. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 15mm, f/5.6, 2.5 sec, ISO 160

Lucky Flower

Sorrel and Ferns in Redwood Forest Redwood National Park, CA Willie, David, Miles and I spent a long weekend exploring the Redwood National and State Parks while trying to avoid getting COVID. We weren't sure if the trip would happen but it turned out things were looking better and we were able to escape our homes and safely play in nature (we took as many precautions as we could. Thankfully none of us contracted COVID during the trip). There's one particular grove that photographers flock to due to the rhododendron blooms that happen in the forest. Willie and I scouted it in the afternoon and we returned a few times. On one particular morning I saw Willie searching for his typical abstract photo of ferns overlapping each other. So of course I had to copy him and look for something similar. I spotted this patch of sorrel (not 4-leaf clover) and liked how the ferns were popping out of them. It wasn't until I got home that I realized there was a teeny flower that was making its way out of the sorrel. I just loved how it adds a splash of color to the scene. Nikon D850 w/Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8: 29mm, f/16, 1.3 sec, ISO 200

Morning Sunshine

Sunrise over Balsamroot Flowers Rowena Crest, Oregon Portland, Oregon would be my top choice I had to move to a different city in the US. I’ve visited a number of times for both fun and photography and the beauty in the Columbia River Gorge just blows me away. Most of my photography trips have been waterfall centric and I was excited to return with Willie to spend most of our time photographing wildflowers. The entire west coast had an extremely dry winter and we knew we had to arrive early in the season to catch the flowers. Unfortunately, the dry winter combined with windy days caused most of the blooming wildflowers to lose their beauty before we even arrived. While the lupines, with their short petals were OK, the beautiful yellow Balsamroot’s were mostly withered and falling apart. Willie and I spent a long time scouting this wildflower field at Rowena Crest for signs of a few patches of beautiful flowers. At one point Willie went off to my right and spotted our first patch of beautiful flowers. I spent the next 30 minutes searching and searching but only came across dying flowers. Almost defeated, I returned to Willie, where he pointed out this patch of 2 healthy flowers. This is one of those instances where it was great to have a shooting partner to keep my head up high and help the morning end with a smile on both our faces! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 17-35mm f/2.8: 22mm, f/5, 1/800 sec, ISO 640 Several photo focus blend

Lupine Federal Bank

Lupine Field at Sunset Silicon Valley, California It's been a pretty nice winter and spring for photography but I've either been too busy with work, too lazy, or stuck indoors due to shelter-in-place to take advantage like some of my friends have been doing. Escaype was predicting a nice sunset and I was itching to get outside and with some encouraging words from Willie, I decided it was time to dust off the camera and hunt for some flowers. In case you're reading this years from now, this photo was taken during the Coronavirus Apocalypse of 2020. One nice thing about shelter-in-place was that there was hardly any traffic on the road. What would have been a 2 hour drive in rush-hour traffic took only 40 minutes. When I arrived, it turned out Willie had changed plans and decided to meet me. We kept 6+ feet away and hunted for the flowers. We found this patch of white lupines on a small hill facing sunset but the field we really wanted to find was too far away from where we parked, with not enough time to get back in the car. As the sun dropped below the hills, I Loved how it cast the entire field (and hills) in golden light. The last bit of light over the hills lit up the flowers in warm, beautiful tones. The wind blew the flowers in all different directions, so I bumped up my settings and fired away, hoping a few of them would capture the flowers as if they were calm and still. Nikon D850 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 19mm, f/10, 1/200 sec, ISO 800

Painted Rising

Reflection Lake at Sunrise, Spring Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington As photographers we go through certain trends within our photography. My current interest area is photographing flowers in the foreground of my scenes. I’ve always wanted to visit Mt. Rainier National Park just because the volcano looks epic, but also because it has beautiful wildflower blooms. Willie and I visited in August of 2016, hoping for carpets of flowers caused by a very wet winter. Unfortunately we only found patches of flowers. We arrived at Mt. Rainier at night, setup camp, and went to bed. When we woke the entire scene was covered in fog. We drove to Reflection Lake but we were surrounded by so much fog we could barely tell where our feet were, let alone which way Rainier was. We left and hiked up Rainier instead. The next morning was a different story though and we were glad we were one of the first people to arrive at Reflection Lake. The lack of wildflower blooms meant that there were only a small handful of flowers next to the lake. Willie immediately plopped his camera down next to this patch of Indian Paintbrush and wouldn’t budge. Off I had to go, trying to find some other flowers. Eventually we traded spots and I was able to get in and snap this photo. I loved how the red Paintbrush contrasted with the purple flowers next to it, while the sun touched the trees and Rainier in the background. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/14, 1/6 sec, ISO 200

Corn Field

Corn Lily Patch Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington Yea yea, I realize that this isn’t a “corn field” in the sense that you’re all used to, but this is corn! Corn Lilies to be exact! Willie has an obsession with the way Corn Lily leaves twist and curl into beautiful abstract shapes and when we found a huge field of Corn Lily on our first day at Mt. Rainier, we had to spend an hour or so photographing them. The entire trip he would keep his eye out for the “perfect patch” (which he only sorta did find). Just after parking and heading on the trail up Mt. Rainier, in search of wildflower fields, we came across this area of Corn Lilies. We searched high and low for a patch of leaves that chris-crossed with each other in beautiful shapes but something else caught my eye: the 2 small flowers that sprung up in this scene. A lot of time landscape photographers will “garden” the scene — remove weeds or place flowers in the scene, but in this case I touched nothing - these were 100% there before I found the photo (and were still there after I took the photo). Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8: 52mm, f/13, 0.8 sec, ISO 250

Rainier Ray

A light ray beams over Mt. Rainier with Indian Paintbrush and Lupine Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington Willie and I had been wanting to visit Mt. Rainier in the “spring” (August) for quite a number of years but we finally made it happen in 2016. With a wet winter we had high hopes that the wildflower blooms would yield carpets and carpets of flowers. Unfortunately we found only patches of flowers. While hiking above Myrtle Falls we came across this field of lupines that caught our eye. Mixed in here-and-there were little splashes of Indian Paintbrush, which provided a nice contrasting color to the red and purple lupine. We knew this would make a great spot for photos, if only the clouds would cooperate. We had initially setup our tripods to face south-west, towards the sunset, since Mt. Rainier was completely cloudless and there were a few patches of clouds facing the Tatoosh Range. Rainier had a different agenda in mind. It’s commonly known that the volcano peak makes its own weather and sure enough, within minutes beautiful clouds had formed around the mountain. When the sun hit them, it sent a giant light ray through the sky, and turned the clouds a beautiful orange, and then purple and pink before fading away. What a sunset! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 18mm, f/13, 1/4 sec, ISO 250

Lilies' Strange Year (Pimple Free)

Coastal Calla Lilies, Pimple Free Big Sur, California I’m not the first and I won’t be the last person to visit this particular patch of Calla Lilies along the Big Sur Coast. Calla Lilies grow all along the California coastline but this spot has become increasingly popular amongst photographers: it has beautiful scenery, it has hills the draw the eye in, a beach and water that sneak into the photo, hundreds of beautiful wildflowers, it’s easily accessible, and most importantly, it’s easy to tell a story here. This story is one that makes me smile every time I look at this photo and think of the day I took it. This has been a strange weather year for the state of California. We were in a drought and the flowers had no clue what was going on. They started blooming early and I feared with the cooky weather that the flowers might both bloom and die early. I asked Sammi if she wanted to take a drive down to Big Sur, stop at Nepenthe for a drink, and then find the flowers. She agreed. The day couldn’t have been better. It was 70 degree blue-bird day. We arrived at Nepenthe, a local restaurant and bar, just as a group of friends was getting up from the best spot in the entire place. For the next several hours Sammi and I enjoyed a beer, some wine, and margaritas while soaking in the views and trying to get a tan. We were having such a good time, in fact, that we didn’t realize it had gotten so late. 3 hours had passed and we needed to rush if we were going to make it to the lilies in time for sunset. The marine layer retreated as I drove and a few little splashes of clouds appeared in the sky. As we raced down to the flowers those few clouds started to catch the colors of the setting sun. We ran around like crazy chickens trying to avoid the poison oak and find the best patch of calla lilies. Rushing a photograph is never recommended and I stressed the entire time. I couldn’t find a patch void of dying flowers. I couldn’t get my tripod where I wanted. My lens wouldn’t go wide enough. I fell into a patch of thorns. The entire time Sammi stayed calm. She pulled me up when I fell, helped me get the tripod in the right spot, ignored the foul language uttered under my breath, and reminded me that ultra-wide lens was packed in my bag. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion and partner that day! It was so peaceful that we stayed well after sunset and needed a flashlight to get back. The best part of it: I came home with a photo I’m happy with! Nikon D800 w/Rokinon 14mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/9, 0.8 sec, ISO 500

Earth's Eye

Reflection Lake at Sunrise, Spring Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.” ~Henry David Thoreau I was struggling to come up with a name for this photo and hoped I could find inspiration from someone better with words than I am. Of course I came across this quote from Thoreau, and there in the middle was the title: Earth’s Eye. That’s exactly how Willie and I felt as we enjoyed sunrise from Reflection Lake on this particular morning. It was cold but it was amazing: a perfect reflection on the lake, Mt. Rainier standing above us, with beautiful patches of wildflowers in front of us. We had briefly stopped at this spot the previous morning only to find the entire scene covered in thick fog. We didn’t have a clue where Mt. Rainier would even be (we thought it was further to the left). To come the next morning and see something completely different was inspiring, and breathtaking. By the time we left we were surrounded by tens of photographers. Luckily we arrived first and could scope out the 2 largest patches of flowers along the lake. The flowers were still blooming (or dying), so there wasn’t much to choose from. We watched the fog form on the lake, then disappear completely. Hopefully you enjoy the beauty of this scene as much as we did, even without an epic sunrise sky going with it. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 16mm, f/16, 0.4 sec, ISO 100

Sunsation

I’ve always been in love with sunflowers. One of my earliest memories is from pre-school where I would make the teachers pick me up so I could grab the seeds from the few sunflowers that grew near the playground. During high school we would eat sunflowers while I sat waiting as designated pinch runner on the baseball team. When I drove by the sunflower fields near Sacramento a few years ago I knew one day I’d have to get some photos of them! Unfortunately last summer was a cloudless summer and there really weren’t any opportunities to photograph the sunflower fields. This year, despite the drought, has had a number of beautiful summer monsoonal sunsets. The weather forecast looked juicy and Cmdr Acosta even came out of hibernation to join Willie, Alan, Ropelato and I at the sunflower fields. Virga filled the sky as we drove and we prayed that the horizon wouldn’t be so thick that it blocked sunset light. Once at the fields we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to find the best patch of sunflowers. They were slightly past their prime with shriveled up leaves and droopy heads but that didn’t stop us. When the sky lit up beautifully we were ready to capture it. Running from composition to composition can sometimes get a bit hectic and in my rush I forgot to “focus stack”: focus on multiple areas both near and far to ensure the entire scene is in focus. Some of you may prefer this photo to be sharp front-to-back but I actually preferred the blurred background ... it locks the eye on the 2 sunflowers in the front. What do you prefer? Deep depth of field or the shallow one? Nikon D800 w/Rokinon 14mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/5.6, 1/100 sec, ISO 640

Peeping Rain

Sunrise Fog-Break Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington I’ve always wanted to visit Mt. Rainier National Park to see its epic wildflower blooms, but every summer the wildflower blooms were predicted to be small or Willie and I had been too busy to make a trip. With the wet winter in 2016, we had hoped that the flowers would be booming and planned a trip. We arrived at Mt. Rainier at night, setup our tent and tried to get some sleep before having to wake up early for sunrise. When we did make it up the mountain we found 2 things: lots and lots and lots (and lots) of fog, and no carpets of flowers. Instead, the hills had patches of blooms, spread here and a little over there. While looking for the flowers we had come across this spot, which was the first area that had a good number of both Indian Paintbrush and Lupine, but we kept walking, hoping we’d find better flowers. We had no idea where Mt. Rainier was since the fog was so thick but just after passing this patch, Mt. Rainier suddenly appeared through the fog! We raced back to these flowers, falling flat on my butt in the process, and managed to snap a few photos before the fog covered Rainier again. I called this photo “Peeping Rain” because it reminded me of Peeping Tom, poking its head up to take a peak, then disappearing again as soon as you look. Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 15mm, f/11, 1/30 sec, ISO 100

Hungry Bee

Hungry BeeBee inside Sunflower Menlo Park, California Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro

Whitey

WhiteySmall White Flower Menlo Park, California Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro

Red Dot Ladybug in Plant Menlo Park, California

3 Smiling Amigos

Sunset over Sunflowers Silicon Valley, California This isn't the first time that I've photographed sunflower fields. I've always loved them -- I don't have many memories as a toddler but I still remember playing with a few sunflower stalks when I was teeny. In high school I loved to eat sunflower seeds while sitting on the bench at baseball games (hey, I was designated pinch runner!). Willie, Zack, and I drove over to these sunflower fields on a night that was predicted to have a beautiful sunset. Thanks to Escaype, the prediction was spot on and the sky lit up beautifully. We arrived right as the sunflower fields were at their "peak", meaning the flowers were still blooming beautifully, their heads weren't drooping, and the petals are nice and fresh. A week or so later and the heads would be dipping down and the leaves withering. I looked for a set of flowers that filled the screen and found that here. In previous years I had taken vertical sunflower photos so I was on the hunt for a landscape orientation scene that filled the frame. These reminded me of the 3 amigos, smiling up at us. D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 15mm, f/10, 1/60 sec, ISO 640

Morning Dew

Morning DewDew on Meadow Flowers Yosemite National Park, California For some reason when Willie, Will, and I were at Yosemite this weekend it got *FREEZING* at night. When I say cold, I'm only talking about 41° but to us wimpy Californian's that was cold. We woke up early Sunday morning to try to catch the golden hour with a big tree and Half Dome in the shot. I thought the tree looked ugly and brown and decided to give up on the photo and instead grabbed my macro lens (Willie and Will both got really nice shots, which I'm partially sad I missed but also glad I have something different from Willie for once!). The morning dew was still sticking to the little cobwebs that the spiders had woven over night and it made for some really neat photos. I had a fun time trying to get up really close and get the right angle/composition that I wanted. Luckily it wasn't too windy and I was able to get some shots that were in focus. I also should mention that I use a 3rd party battery grip on my D300s, which for the most part I love, however, it drives me nuts when using it to shoot macro. The battery grip doesn't connect to the camera all that sturdy and the lens slips a couple millimeters when I let go of the lens to take the photo (since the camera bends in between the grip and the camera). I end up having to compose a bit higher than I want and let the camera settle back down to where I want. Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro: 105mm, f/5.6, ¼ sec, ISO 500, Tripod

Wet Leaf after Rainstorm

Wet Leaf after RainstormNovember 2009 Menlo Park, California Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro

A Bee's Snack

A Bee's SnackNectar of a Purple and Yellow Flower Santa Cruz, California Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro

Wet Rose after Rainstorm

Wet Rose after RainstormNovember 2009 Menlo Park, California Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro

Chorus

Sunset over Sunflowers Silicon Valley, California There's something about these sunflower fields that make me imagine they're all about to speak to us. I don't quite know what they'd say, but it really looks like there's faces on here, ready to sing their hearts out. Or maybe their seeds out? Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 14mm, f/11, 1/3 sec, ISO 500

Painted by Tatoosh

Indian Paintbrush and Lupine at Twilight Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington There’s something incredibly peaceful about seeing a field of wildflowers in front of giant mountain ranges, so obviously I wanted to travel to see some of this. Willie and I arrived at Mt. Rainier National Park in August hoping to find carpets and carpets of wildflowers. We didn’t quite find them but we did find nice patches of flowers, like this one. We spent the better part of 2 days hunting around the Paradise Valley area of Mt. Rainier National Park and the lupine and Indian Paintbrush were the two most common flowers we found. In this particular field, we found a nice picture of the two plant types while the Tatoosh Range loomed in the background. We found this field high up on Mazama Ridge, a beautiful area of rolling hills and fields of flowers. It looked as if some of the Lupine was already dying and the Indian Paintbrush would only last a few more days. I snapped the photos of the flowers at sunset, surrounded by thousands of mosquitos (man, a face net would have been helpful!) and then snapped the sky some hours later once the sun had set and the bugs had gone to bed. While we didn’t get to see the massive number of flowers we had hoped for, the fields we did find were still absolutely gorgeous! Nikon D800 w/Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8: 22mm, f/13, 1/3 sec, ISO 100

Octopi

OctopiOctopus Flower Menlo Park, California Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro

Water Droplets on Purple Flower

Water Droplets on Purple FlowerOctober 2010 Menlo Park, California Nikon D300s w/Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro