Gorman Hills Easter Eve Wall of Wildflowers

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Los Angeles County
mid morning Saturday April 19, 2003, slide 03I4-10
Pentax 67 AEII, 55>100mm, Gitzo G1325 Mk2
Drum scanned Fuji Provia 100F 220 film to 200mb RGB file
Adobe Photoshop 6.0 processed for accurate image fidelity
Lightjet5000 printed on Fuji Crystal Archive paper
signature top right

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The Gorman Hills are located in northwest Los Angeles County just south of Tejon Pass beside the Interstate 5 freeway. For decades it's color has caught the eyes of spring time drivers along the highway. Like most good wildflower sites in Southern California, the displays of wildflowers vary greatly from year to year with good winter rains a key factor. On April 19, 2003 which was the eve of Easter Sunday, the displays were so remarkable, one might argue they were likely the most awesome wildflowers displays in the state of California during our lifetime.

Setting up these displays was a tropical storm about February 12 which apparently concentrated exceptionally heavy precipitation in this area as it made national news. A mudslide up to four feet deep covered parts of the broad I5 freeway for a mile. The previous years since 1998 had been droughty which tends to build up a cache of dormant seeds. Another factor that made this Saturday special was that it was a particularly stormy period for three weeks prior to this date. Hence areas we ventured into were absolutely pristine with no use paths of trampled vegetation. In fact by the end of the day the roadside had become a carnival of people with the vegetation in places looking like an elephant herd had passed through. Saturday was a mostly sunny day with an exceptionally deep blue sky. Further of importance to photographers interested in still foregrounds, the morning was absolutely dead calm with only a slight intermittent breeze in the afternoon. Anyone familiar with Antelope Valley knows a calm April day is rare.

Early in the morning, a photographer friend and I parked on a frontage road west of I5 surveying the amazing colors across the freeway making excited plans to climb the steep slopes above the east side Gordon Post frontage road. About a dozen cars were soon parked at what would be the main access point for the public during the next month.

Big tripods and cameras began creeping up that slope. We however parked to the south, then climbed an obscure narrow gully. Reaching the upper broad gully above, we were absolutely awestruck by the waist deep jungle of absolutely peaking colorful growth without a track to be seen.

This view is from about elevation 4,100 feet northward across the head of steep slopes of a small gully. An amazing blaze of many colors to behold. The yellow species is California coreopsis, coreopsis californica Frame center left are deep blue hued Bentham lupine, lupinus benthamii. Dominating the upper slopes are purple flowers of two species, globe gilia, gilia capitata ssp abrotanifolia and lacy phacelia, phacelia cryptantha. Note how those flowers also flow down the steep shallow gully mid right. Orange flowers are of course our famous California poppy, eschscholtzia californica. In the near lower left corner and all greenish areas are smaller yellow-orange petals of hairy stemmed fiddleneck, amsinckia tessellata. Also there are light purple petals of tricolor gilia, gilia latiflora and small blue white petals of miniature lupine, lupinus bicolor. Lower mid left are white petals of desert tidy tips, layia glandulosa. Amongst the dark green of the steepening gully mid left, are whitish green flowers of cream cups, platystemon californicus ssp crinitus. Below the left skyline, dark brown patches are jewel flower, caulanthus cooperi. Several other smaller less showy species were overwhelmed below in the green jungle. Note the bare light brown patches of the natural sandy soil responsible for the smooth curving features of the hills. Above the head of the gully one can see the dark stakes from an old deteriorating barbed wire fence.

For this frame with difficulty, I wandered back and forth on the steep slope seeking the most aesthetic frame. Then waited briefly for an optimum pattern of clouds forming atop the ridge. Within a few minutes the last clouds gave way to a cloudless sky.

Crop at 100% print size:

   David Senesac
   email: sales@davidsenesac.com

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