Monday, January 18, 2010
Kansas Country
Click to visit Kansas Countryside gallery
I grew up in California, so photographically speaking Kansas has been something of a challenge for me... at least until recent years.
With more rain and milder summer and autumn weather, the Kansas I have lived in for more than two decades is changing. Brown fields under piercing-clear blue summer skies have been replaced with green fields filled with wild flowers that bloom well into September.
Photographically, this means richly clouded blue skies over lush, green, meadows liberally sprinkled with wild yellow sunflowers, other daisies, and other wild flowers.
If this weather change persists, then Kansas' new policy of less frequent and more conservative mowing along country roads should combine to make Kansas country a destination for photographers interested in scenic landscape and wild flowers.
And of course, this landscape is populated with an abundance of livestock which are also featured in many of these images.
Kansas country images obtained mostly during the last two autumns in south central Kansas are posted on my Kansas Countryside Gallery. Some of these will be on display at the Up Front Gallery, 412 East Douglas (near the northeast corner of Douglas and Topeka), for the January 2010 Final Friday crawl in Wichita. 316 262 2435.
The image at the top of this post is an unpainted barn near Augusta, Kansas.
Labels: barns, countryside, Kansas, livestock, pasture, sunflowers, wildflowers
Friday, October 23, 2009
Wild Kansas Flowers
Click the image to view the Wild Kansas Flower gallery
Four or five years ago the color of late September in Kansas was dry brown. With increasing rainfall and perhaps milder summers, late summer this year has remained the deep green of spring.
What's more, there has been an explosion of wildflowers such that some ranch land looks as though wild sunflowers are actually the summer crop.
Most of the images in this gallery were taken over the last few months in central and southeastern Kansas. Many are stitched together from more than one photograph to provide a larger "negative" for bigger enlargements.
Most of these images have been "painted" in Photoshop to bring out detail, contrast and color intensity or hue that highlights features that are less obvious to a casual glance.
The Flannel Mullein pictured above was growing just outside the Bartlett Arboretum in Belle Plains, Kansas. The Great Mullein contains coumarin, an anticoagulant, and hesperidin, an antioxidant, and has a long history of use in the preparation of alternative remedies.
Labels: flannel mullein, Kansas, wild flowers
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