Photography by Naomi Drew
More post processing of older pictures. Over the next week, revisits to the California Poppy Reserve outside Los Angeles. The day we went was windy and cold, and my fingers were so numb I could barely hold the camera. The sky was filled with clouds, the air was clear, and the hills were covered with blues and oranges of lupine and poppies.
This caught my eye yesterday – all the curves in the cloud, path, hills, shadows.
Another view from the Poppy Reserve in California. Kodak Ektar 100, Olympus XA4, scanned using the Pakon 135.
Panoramas allow me to capture the grandeur the vast outdoors has . . .
There are a number of different programs which do panos, one being a leap from Lightroom to the pano functions of Photoshop, MS ICE (image composition editor), and so on.
Most people do panos in digital. I like to do it with film, too, as it is a bit of a challenge – and it requires a bit of thought . . . after all, there is only so much film, far less than the room on an SD card!
And here we are: A 5-image pano of the poppy fields at the California Poppy Reserve last March, in the 50mph winds. The middle of the image doesn’t look too bad when smallish, but if you click on it twice, you will see a lot of blur in the center. Not a fab job, but the job it does is there – it shows you the stunning beauty of the fields. With less wind, the picture would have been a lot more successful.
The California Poppy Reserve borders on private property, separated by that classical western fence of barbed wire. On the other side – but cropped out for aesthetics – was a jeep and a couple of guys, no doubt admiring the view, as were we tourists on this side of the fence!
It’s amazing to see colors splashed across the hillsides surrounding the California Poppy Reserve! Fields of yellow and orange, meadows of purple.
Today we went out to the California Poppy Reserve near Lancaster, California. In Los Angeles County, this is in the middle of nowhere, and here is where you see the beauty that was California before Los Angeles and urban sprawl took over. The rains of the past winter have produced an abundance of flowers – more than in many years. Here is the first of a series I took today.
It’s funny how weather can change from one place to another. We drove 70 miles, through canyons and back roads to get here. From our 71 F city we came into a cold (50 F) and very, very windy environment (30-50 mph winds). All I had for cold weather was a vest and a short-sleeved T-shirt. Brrrr!
This is a panorama of about 5 images.
The Glass Aerie 