Carlsbad Flower Fields

Author's Comments

The fields are a graphic designer's fever dream. Stripes of red and orange and pink and yellow running in parallel bands down a hillside that, if you position yourself correctly, ends in the Pacific. It should not work. It works. I came the first time expecting kitsch and left thinking about color theory. The rows are planted in a particular order that builds and releases tension as your eye moves across them, and on a clear April morning when the marine layer has burned off but the sun is still low, the saturation is almost embarrassing. You do not need to do much. The composition is already there. The trick is timing and angle. Weekday mornings before ten, before the tour buses and the families with strollers fill the walkways. Get low - the rows compress beautifully when you shoot near ground level, and the ocean rises into the frame instead of disappearing behind the crest of the hill. A longer lens flattens the bands into pure color. A wider lens lets the sky and sea do their work in the upper third. I will tell you what I tell everyone: do not fight the obvious photograph. The wide shot of colored stripes meeting the Pacific is the photograph people come for, and it is worth making well. But stay another hour after you have it. Walk the rows and find a single ranunculus backlit by morning sun, the petals translucent and structured like something architectural. That is the image I bring home and keep. Six weeks a year. Then the hillside goes quiet again until next March.

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