With all the rains come lots of wildflowers. These are typical early spring wildflowers growing over much of Northern California. Most can be grown in gardens from seed, bulbs or plants… well, maybe not the poison oak…
I don’t know which species all of these plants belong to. Maybe that’s good, since I can just appreciate them as they are.
Wildflowers are typically best photographed early in the morning or on overcast days. This gives more saturated colors and eliminates shadows. The exception to this is California poppies; they close if they’re not in full sun. The workaround is to shade them for the photograph or shoot in HDR if there’s no choice.
It’s also good to shoot multiple shots using different apertures (f/stops): a small aperture (large f/stop) will add detail to the flower at the expense of cluttering up the background. Shooting with your lens wide open throws most of the flower out of focus for a softer, dreamier effect.
If you plan on doing this kind of thing a lot, invest in a camera with a good macro lens, and save your phone for selfies. The dynamic range on a serious camera gives much better quality images than cell phones, although this may change as phones get more sophisticated (dynamic range is how many levels of brightness the camera can capture).
