Tags: Monarch Butterfly Danaus plexippus San Diego Wild Animal Park San Pasqual California Shield Of Excellence SOE NaturesFinest BlueRibbonWinner GoldStarAward ColorPhotoAward UltimateShot VosPlusBellesPhotos
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Explore #311, 4/20/09.
View On Black
Tags: Brilliant Gold Sunflowers San Juan Capistrano Orange County California ImpressedBeauty Excellence AnAwesomeShot
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Explore #375, 4/21/09.
Much better if you View On Black.
In case you haven't noticed, I've created and have been adding to a new color-themed set, to which I will be adding new images over the next few weeks, showing different aspects of color, but all with color in the title.
I've finally figured out a way to solve one of my problems with The Flower Fields. It breaks my heart whenever I go in the fields, today, because I see so many off-colors (we used to call them "rogues") mixed in with what are supposed to be solid bands of color. My dad worked so hard to develop the pure colors (before he started to separate the individual colors, all ranunculus were mixed, like you see on the left, above), and we used to spend tens of thousands of dollars each year, paying people to go through the fields and pull the plants out of the ground that don't match the solid colors, but I don't see any evidence of that happening, today.
Anyway, back to the fix for my problem. My solution is just to do a little "digital roging" and clone them out in Photoshop. Works like a charm and is very easy to do. I didn't bother to do the ones in the white, because they don't show up much from a distance, and because it is so badly mixed that it would have been way too much trouble.
Tags: Blue Sky Colorful Ranunculus Tecolote www.theflowerfields.com Carlsbad California RubyPhotographer ABigFave BlueRibbonWinner
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Tags: Ranunculus Tecolote www.theflowerfields.com Carlsbad California Pot-of-Gold
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Explore #193, 4/22/09.
View Large On Black
Though they make more interesting photography subjects, these "single" ranunculus were what we used to try to avoid, through seed selection of just the "double" ones. We used to have areas for seed production that were set aside from the bulb production areas, which were separated by high fences, made from cheese cloth, that prevented cross-pollination from the wind, and presumably, from bees (although it seems like it'd be easy for them to fly right over them), in order to keep the colors pure. Workers would go through these areas several times, as the flowers came into full bloom, and put paper tags around the plants that were the "best of the best", so that they could be identified after the petals had fallen, when it was time to harvest the seeds to be planted for next year's bulb production.
We usually saved two years' seed production, in different locations, in case something happened to the most recent ones. Some years, for whatever reason, the percentage of viable seeds would be way down (you can tell if a seed is viable by examining the sheaths, which look kind of like raw oatmeal, very carefully, and seeing if they have the tiny black dots, which are the seeds), so we would use more of the seed from the previous year, when we planted it to produce bulbs. Though it might look easy to some, growing ranunculus for bulb production is quite a tricky process.
Tags: Ranunculus Tecolote www.theflowerfields.com Carlsbad California Macro Photos (NO LIMITS) ExcellentsFlowers BlueRibbonWinner
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