I've been rather quiet on this board the last two months in part because I haven't been in the Sierra much. Since New Years 2010 I've been out nearly every weekend that began visiting local SF Bay Area locales and as March moved out further to the Sierra foothills and central California Coast Range on weekend road trips. Although it was off the radar of most photographers, I could see from my close watch of weather conditions that Carrizo Plain National Monument was where the best wildflower conditions were most likely to appear. And by a few weeks later that came to pass. See page 3 of the below feature link where I summarize my thoughts on the rainy season of 2010.
I visited that monument three times into early April. At the same time most wildflower seekers and photographers were in a quandary trying to figure out where in Southern California were the real blooms that were so expected to eventually occur after the significant rains of late January. Some photographers did in fact visit the Carrizo Plain early, but conditions there were actually sub-par versus 2003, 2005, or 2006, so that did not really provide telling reports at the usual websites. The real exceptional bloom was however in the monument's Temblor Range, a badlands mountain range with few real trails and intimidating crosscountry travel. An area I first climbed into in 2006 and wrote this feature on my site:
http://www.davidsenesac.com/SoCal_4-17- ... 17-06.html
Since mid April, while continuing to get out on weekends locally a bit, I've spent alot of hours coding in html and css the below feature for my 2010 work. The below sub-page link is also at top right on my home page. The best of those images are also at the bottom of my Gallery B.
http://www.davidsenesac.com/Spring_2010 ... 10_p0.html
