Western Heart's Ease
Viola ocellata
Welcome to my photo gallery!
I have been seriously photographing wildflowers since early 2005. Death Valley was experiencing its wettest year on record, which meant only one thing: a spectacular showing of wildflowers! I bought digital cameras for my kids, and we spent three days photographing every kind of flower we could find. Friends and family kept asking to see the Death Valley flowers, so I started building this website as a way to share my photos with everyone.
My collection has now grown to include over 400 species photographed throughout California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Macau, and Taiwan.
The wildflower photos are organized in different ways. You can display an individual species by selecting its common name or scientific name from a list. Or, you can display all of the photos of a specific family or taken in a specific location.
My definition of a wildflower is a flowering plant obviously growing in the wild, i.e. not under cultivation, not in a garden, not part of decorative landscaping, and not showing any other signs of having been planted by someone. This means I do include invasive species along with the natives. For example, Vinca major is a European species commonly used in decorative landscaping, but the specimens I photograped were definitely growing on their own in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.
These photos are of an exhibit of clothing of Chinese ethnic minorities at the Shanghai Museum of Art in July, 2004.
