Spring Poppies

The spring day began auspiciously. As our little group started on our hike near my home town of Coloma in the Sierra Nevada foothlls, movement on a close-by snag caught our eyes. Vulture? Hawk? No. The bird took to the skies, its steady wingspan enveloping us with its grace and beauty. Its great size, feathers and flying patterns marked it as a golden eagle. They nest in this steep river canyon, yet I had never seen one locally.

Moments later, we found ourselves on a precipice of sorts, marbled by a network of homemade trails that zigzagged hundreds of feet downward to the American River, which made a blue, roaring curve at the bottom of the canyon. California poppies proliferate here in spring, and today was poppy perfection. Great fields of orange--seasoned with little white popcorn flowers and blue lupines-- beckoned us. We had brought cameras, but mostly we took the time just to sit and to absorb these magical moments of spring.

The photo attached to this little remembrance is altered in Topaz, a Photoshop filter. I used Topaz Adjust 4, labeled the exposure correction tool, but I simplified the photo drastically to get this painterly effect. I applied the filter on a duplicate layer, then used a layer mask to bring back the detail of the poppy in the foreground.