About Feral Flowers

The earliest photographs were made with Canon 35mm film cameras using a range of lenses and filters. Much of the archive was recorded on transparency film, a demanding medium with little tolerance for exposure error and very limited opportunity for correction once the exposure had been made.

Over time, the work developed around atmosphere—the quality of the air, seasonal moisture, wind, cloud movement and the direction of light. These conditions could transform the appearance of flowers and terrain from one moment to the next, making patience and being present in the landscape as important as the camera itself.

In 1991, the Fuji GX617 panoramic camera became part of the project. Its large 6×17 cm transparency film frame produces a true 3:1 panoramic photograph, allowing broad valleys, hillsides and mountain foothills to be recorded within a single sweeping frame. Digital photography later extended the archive while continuing the traditional 3:2 proportions of 35mm photography.

Across those different cameras and formats, the photographic process remained rooted in recording what was physically present before the lens. For much of the archive, that record still exists in its original analog form.

Much of the Feral Flowers archive survives as original film transparencies dating back to the 1980s. While photographs made with digital cameras are also represented within the later archive, the great majority of the photographic record was created on film and the analog originals remain its foundation.

When viewed directly on a light table through a magnifying loupe, these transparencies reveal the color, fine detail and depth physically contained within the film.

They are more than source material for reproduction. Each transparency is a physical photographic record made when light reflected from an actual landscape passed through the camera lens and exposed the film at a particular place and moment in time.

That physical connection has taken on new significance in an increasingly digital world. The renewed interest in film cameras, vinyl records, cassette tapes and other analog media reflects, in part, a desire for objects with a tangible connection to their origins. The original Feral Flowers transparencies provide that connection and establish a form of photographic provenance extending back four decades.

Digital photography later became another means of continuing the record, but it did not replace its analog origins. Film remains the predominant medium represented throughout the archive and provides a physical record of many landscapes as they appeared decades ago.

As artificial intelligence, CGI and digital fabrication make it increasingly possible to create convincing landscapes that never existed, the analog archive carries an additional significance. These photographs were not imagined or generated. What appears on the original film was present before the lens — light, landscape and wildflowers recorded directly onto a physical photographic medium.

The printing process began in the traditional darkroom, with hand burning and dodging of black-and-white prints and work with Cibachrome. Modern digital workflows now allow the original film archive to be reproduced with exceptional control while preserving the character of the source transparency.

High-resolution scans intended for large-scale printing are carefully prepared to preserve edge acuity, tonal richness and the structural detail of the original film. Because of the expansive area of the 6×17 cm frame, Fuji GX617 photographs can retain remarkable clarity at mural scale.

Prints exceeding ten feet in width have been produced from the panoramic archive, including a permanent wildflower mural installation at the Frazier Park Library.