Battling the Drought by landESCAPEphotography | jeff lewis In a state that is experiencing the most severe drought in its recorded history, I can only imagine what life as a flower must be like.
A lot of us don’t understand just how severe the situation is. Why do you think lush grassy lawns are still being watered? Why do you think people are still taking 20-minute showers? Haven’t these people HEARD and SEEN pictures of how empty our reservoirs are? Don’t they KNOW that Southern California will LITERALLY RUN OUT of water in 12-18 months if current trends continue? Nope. Not at all.
See, the problem isn’t just that we’re all ignorant. It’s that the water agencies are doing the absolute worst thing possible: they’re doing an amazing job at water management in a time of crisis. This is the ultimate paradox: it means the state of emergency and urgency is completely masked to anyone who doesn’t experience it firsthand. I water no plants at my cabin and do my laundry every 5-6 weeks. What are you doing to help?
Better do something, and cross your fingers for a wet winter… or in a year, we may be finding ourselves writing the end of our own horror movie…
Anyway, off the soap box and about the image. I’ve been looking around the Sierra for a few seasons now for a good field of wildflowers that’s open to the sky. It’s surprisingly tough. That’s probably why you don’t see many good wildflower shots in these mountains: most of the best displays are in small (though intimately beautiful!) meadows that are surrounded by tall trees. I stumbled across this open one while hiking on a recent ranger patrol and thought it might be great if the light ever got good. I’d been blue-sky-skunked for an entire MONTH at that point and didn’t know if the light would come before the flowers wilted away as the little stream dried up.
The next day, the light finally came, so I dashed up the trail and tried to nail my shot. I guess some things were just meant to be!
I had to do an exposure stack, focus stack, and a little bit of perspective warping to get this final shot, but I’m really happy with it. Let me know what you think. Before anyone asks, though, I refuse to clone in the missing flower petals – I think it’s the ones that aren’t quite perfect that have the best personality 🙂
oh, yeah – does anyone know what kind of flowers these are? they’re about two inches across. I know the red ones are paintbrush.
EDIT: my field guide says Bigelow’s Sneezeweed!
– Jeff
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