Dead Cholla Rising

[David_Senesac]

During mid March of this spring of 2008, I was on my second of three long roads trips this year down to Southern California to photograph wildflower blooms. Early on the morning of March 20 I returned to a pristine location in the San Jacinto River basin hills I had discovered the previous afternoon. I had to wait until 10am PST as California poppies remain closed until mid morning before slowly opening. Provia 100F 4x5 transparency about 10:45am through 150mm Nikkor lens at about EV14.8 f/61 1/8 second.

Not only was this date the vernal equinox but this was also the Holy Week preceeding Easter and this was Holy Thursday, the date Christ held the Last Supper with the Apostles. Interestingly as one can see from the full image link at the bottom of this post, the blue hued baby blue-eyes form a pattern concentrated right below the charred cholla. Among the flowers in this image are California poppies, California coreopsis, baby blue-eyes, birds-eye gilia, goldfields, lacy phacelia, and canterbury bells while several other species were also nearby. The above image is actually an aesthetic quarter-size crop of my transparency. Besides a 38 inch wide print of the full image, I'm likely to also market a smaller 24 inch wide print of this crop.

This next link is another crop sized to display on usual monitors at about the size a 30x38 inch print that shows far better detail despite being another crude flatbed scan. One can in fact see colors through holes in the hollow cholla branches:

With the full image, web downsizing compresses the image so greatly that small features as detailed flowers become mere blobs of color as one can see with this link to the full image:

http://www.davidsenesac.com/Spring_2008/08-C11-3.jpg

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Spring 2008 Wildflower Trip Chronicles
http://www.davidsenesac.com/Spring_2008/spring_2008_p0.html

 

[manaheim]

Wow. Did you do much post-processing? It almost looks like an impressionist painting. Very neat picture.

 

[David_Senesac]

Wow. Did you do much post-processing? It almost looks like an impressionist painting. Very neat picture.

The short answer is all my landscape work is post processed to closely represent as reasonably as is possible what was captured on the Provia film given correct exposure that is one of the most color neutral films available. In other words the hues, saturation, and contrast are quite close to my big 4x5 transparency as seen on a high color index lightbox beside my computer. I am a long time strong advocate of reasonably accurate web and print presentations. The long answer is available on my website homepage at top left under "Photography Style and Philosophy".

The more downsizing compression with a subject that has small fine details and strong saturation, the more the web result may appear like an impressionistic painting. That is why the enlarged crop looks less so while the link at bottom showing the whole image looks more so.

...David