California Super Bloom - April 2019

We were fortunate to be in Southern California visiting my daughter and her family in early April 2019. After a drought-busting California winter, the state was experiencing one of nature's marvels, a Super Bloom -- when many hillsides were exploding with color. The flowers differed according to locale, but we were at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, where the orange California Poppy was fully in bloom.

These photos were taken and processed without adding any saturation. In fact, I processed them as 16-bit images in Prophoto RGB, which provides the widest possible gamut, and they still blow away any but the highest quality display. (The compression added by conversion to JPEGs doesn't help.)

Super Bloom 1 -- Fields, and fields, and fields like this. I know how Dorothy must have felt.
Super Bloom 2 -- The color intensity very nearly hurts your eyes.
Super Bloom 4 -- A rare interjection of purple.
Super Bloom 5 -- A caldera of bloomin' poppies.
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