Cactus Flower and Bee

Today thanks to a total alignment of stars and activity calender I was able to get out and do some shooting. Lucky me, I noticed yesterday that the powers that be turned on the San Gabriel River again and it was flowing fast and hard. Add in the rain we had two weeks ago and wild flowers were tricked into blooming again.

This is the flower of the beaver-tail cactus that is all over the southwest. It has this beautiful yellow bloom that turns into a huge red seed pod by fall. The local Indians actually eat that seed pod as well as the dethorned pads from the cactus itself. I'm not into the whole labor intensive prep so I'll leave that delicacy to the Indians and just enjoy the bloom.

This flower was done in the Orton style and post processed to bring on the deep rich colors of Kodachrome on Cibachrome paper.

I have quite a bit I shot along the river. Some is already done in HDR as I like the tonal range it brings to the table for the final image. Some were done in HDR and brought to the surreal...the graffiti under the bridge that I will need to work on some more tomorrow in the afternoon.

Goal...Weds morning, gawd willing and the ground isn't shaking again is to have a stroll through the other side of the San Gabriel River along Duarte's Encanto Park.

A picture a day keeps the insanity at bay.

Spring has arrived in the Mojave!

The lead photo is simply a teaser from this weekends visit to the Mojave Desert around Palm Springs and Palm Desert. I shot a ton of landscapes with the intent of giving them post processing through Photomatix for HDR file generation.

This year wound up being a "normal" winter in terms of local rainfall so the wild flowers are going to be very abundant. Already the desert floor around Palm Springs is bursting in color. Enjoy the few random shots I got done of the wild flowers.

I hope to make it up to the Poppy Preserve near Lancaster in the high desert this week as the poppies are supposed to be as lush as they were in Spring of 05. Getting up to the Calico Ghost Town for more of the high desert wild flowers around there is on the agenda as well. It will all depend getting the spare time to pull it all off.

Just a little flower not bigger than a quarter. Don't know its name. Just know that its a native prairie wild flower. I found it growing along the bike path near out campsite in Valentine Nebraska.