High Noon Over a Rainbow Desert
One of the photographer’s earliest Fuji GX617 panoramas, this image was made during a remarkable wildflower season on Tejon Ranch. Across the desert landscape, intense California poppies covered the hillsides while a broad variety of flowers created bands of color through the foreground and middle distance. The high midday sun intensified the reflected color across the hills and warmed the Adonis lupines enough to release their distinctive sweet fragrance.
Landscape photographs were not normally made at high noon when the light could become harsh and unforgiving. Access to Tejon Ranch was limited, however, and on this day there was little choice about the hour. The scene had to be photographed when access made it possible.
Under the warm midday sun, the landscape became intensely sensory. California poppies reflected brilliant orange from the hillsides while the Adonis lupines released a sweet fragrance reminiscent of grape-flavored bubble gum as their flowers warmed in the sun.
The panorama is cropped slightly differently from most of the photographer’s later Fuji GX617 images because of a technical issue encountered while making the photograph. Rather than diminishing the image, that small irregularity remains part of one of the earliest panoramic experiments in the archive.