"Buenas Noches Carrizo"

Carrizo Plain provides a stark contrast of inhospitable arid conditions for most of the year and of a jubilant blooming of wildflowers in March and April. 2010 was a good year, but not as good as 2005 when the slopes were painted with orange, purple and yellow. Still, the expanse of blooms covered miles of mountain ridges, unlike anything I have ever seen. In this case, Coreopsis carpets the high ridges of the Temblor Range not far from the San Andreas Fault. Thank you for your assessments and please utilize the Larger preview!

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To my mind, this is a slight departure from your usual style. It is as attractive as usual, but seems less 'natural' - perhaps a touch more painterly... Then again, the varying moods of nature never cease to surprise.

Thanks PJ! I suppose it may appear out of the norm for my style, but it is in fact processed in much the same way as all my other work. Perhaps the starburst has a fair amount of orange, but once again, this is very much as I captured it. The light was intense and the colors were also, so the combination produced a very vivid scene. Seeing these flowers with backlight is almost electrifying. Indeed, this is why I seek out situations like this, with the last light of the day piercing the landscape and the creating a glow in the blooms. I am often told that much of my work has a painterly look. I believe it is that I am able to fuse various bracketed exposures to harness very dynamic lighting conditions. While our own eyes may be able to record a scene in real time, from shadows to highlights, a single exposure from a camera will almost always lose one or the other. Shadows will be very dark or the sky will be washed out. A painting, however, will be produced from one's mind or from what someone observed with their eyes and, subsequently, have detail throughout, even in very dynamic lighting. This results in what might look unnatural as a photograph, even though it might look natural as a painting. I can tell you that a camera is a poor medium to capture what we see, it falls woefully short compared to our eyes for recording a scene. Yet, if various exposures are fused, I believe the net result is very much natural, but very unlike a single photograph. Well, I hope this makes some sense!