Leon Turnbull Photography

I think I am in denial. Denial of spring, that is. It happens most every year. I love the winter. I love the rain and snow. The more precipitation that we get, the better the waterfalls will be. So come March, I find myself hoping beyond hope that we will get another couple weeks of solid rain here. Another good storm or two. But alas, it is now the end of March, and so it seems spring has indeed arrived. Too early for me.

Well, I figured I had better just face up to it. Spring is here. What are you going to do about it, Leon? Over the last couple weeks, I’ve seen plenty of California poppy pictures, still trying to deny that they are really blooming right now. Get with it, man, the poppies are blooming. I gotta get out and take some photos of them now. Before it’s too late.

So with my family in tow, we drove down to Jackson on Hwy 49. I had seen some pics of nice poppy fields there. I thought we should go check it out. My wife was all over that. She loves that kind of thing. The kids were so-so about it. At least they weren’t rebelling at the idea. Actually, Nekoda likes flowers. She was perfectly fine with it. Jadon … well, like I said, he wasn’t rebelling.

When we got down there, we found one poppy field only. But it was definitely a gorgeous one, right along the highway. The poppies were abundant along the hillside. But it was a rather steep hillside. All I had on were my runners (that is, tennis shoes to you Americans). I managed to carefully climb up along the fence to get up close to the poppies and take some photos. It seems, though, that the best locations to shoot were on the other side of the fence (the grass is always greener, right?). I have definitely seen photographs from certain professional photographers who will remain nameless, taken from the other side of the fence. It may or may not have been okay to do it, but I didn’t really feel comfortable climbing over the fence, especially considering I would be in full view of anyone or certain authorities who might be driving by on the highway. Plus, it was a yucky barbed wire fence. So I took my photos from the less green side of the fence. It was still quite nice. Quite nice indeed.