Click On Any Image To See A Larger Version

Because of the drought in California, the wild poppies that pop-up in the spring in the Antelope Valley have been sparse.  As a result, it has been several years since I've gone to photograph them.  I heard through the grapevine that a late, little storm had deposited enough rain to allow them to bloom and that they were the best in three years.  So, off I went with a friend ...

In my absence, the first thing I noticed was that many of the fields surrounding the poppies had become newly created solar factories generating electricity covering hundreds of acres!  Wow, what a change.  There were no humans in sight ... just acre after acre of solar panels.

Naturally, we tried to photograph them and see if we could express what we were seeing.  Back home, looking at my images, I thought I had failed to capture their essence.  

Here's one image cropped a bit, but essentially as it came from the camera.  It is pretty flat emotionally and uninspiring:

I started experimenting with the image in Photoshop using some new tools and created this image which I call Currents #1:

I liked the results so I took a different image, and it looked like this before I started manipulating it:

and turned it the next image which I really like.  It reminds me a bit of the movie Tron.  I've named it Currents #2:

I don't know if you would call it photography, and yes, I've distorted reality quite a bit.  But I think it is much more interesting.  I hope you see it that way, too!

Adam

P.S.  Yes, I did  get some poppy images.  Hopefully you'll see them in a later post!