Location: Death Valley Super Bloom events
The Death Valley Super Bloom arrives with El Niño winters in California. The Pacific storms are strong enough to get over the mountains and drench the deserts. The result is a Super Bloom of wildflowers in Death Valley National Park. Seeds that have been dormant and buried in the desert sands for decades start to bloom. My husband and I had scheduled our trip as a tag-on to a family visit in Bakersfield months before the rains started just to experience this National Park in the spring, and so we were able to view this natural event first-hand. We learned in retrospect that early booking is critical to a successful visit when wet winters arrive in California.
The Challenge:
Death Valley Super Blooms bring out a proliferation of flowers. Taking photos of flowers seems like it should be easy. After all, don’t you just drive along the road, stop when you see a pretty scene, and get out and shoot? Well…..yes…. driving along and noticing pretty scenes is certainly what gets you there. When flowers are this prolific, though, getting a shot that has interest and dynamic qualities takes some observation.
The Accidental Photographer Tip:
Look at this scene for a minute. What do you notice? Here’s what I saw. The contrast of yellow flowers against the blue shadows on the hills certainly makes the flowers stand out. Still, though, as a sea of flowers, they looked flat and uninteresting. I could see a few curves in the floral landscape, but nothing strong enough to stand out. I could tell if we drove down the road to look for angles in the pattern of flowers, I was going to lose the light and the shot.
I studied this scene for a while before I saw the receding curve of flowers in the background. That curve and the gradual loss of individual flower identify added the dynamic quality and interest I wanted. That was the shot that told the story of the flowers, tucked against the desert landscape and gloriously fighting for space in the sand.
For simple tips to improve your photography on the go or on your travels with any camera or smart phone, check out my book, The Accidental Photographer for the Camera Bag.
For those of you interested in getting a more technical foundation, I recommend taking the courses at New York Institute of Photography. These are online correspondence courses with assignments reviewed by professional photographers.
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