In February of 2023 I combined a veterinary conference with a chance to spend a week photographing spring wildflowers. As part of that trip, I headed to California and the Anza Borrego desert. I had never been there before, and even though it wasn’t spring yet I was hoping the flowers would be doing well. They weren’t bad, and the first evening I camped at June Wash.

Although the flowers weren’t bad, the weather was, and the wind was ripping. Clouds cut off a sunset (which was probably a blessing; with the wind it would have been action photography), so I headed back to the protection of the car to lick my wounds

Although the wind was still blowing some the next morning, it was definitely better, and the sky looked like it might provide a sunrise. The composition I planned on photographing was oriented to the northwest, and I knew if it got color it would be later than the color to the east. I decided that while waiting for the color to move to my planned composition I would play with shooting to the east as the color developed there, and then quickly switch to the originally planned composition as the color moved across the sky. My choice of a foreground looking east was lackluster, so my heart really wasn’t in it despite there being some reasonable color in the east. I kept my eye to the northwest and my original comp, but the color never really took off. Somewhat disappointed, I stood back up as the sun began to creep onto the landscape. When I turned around, this is what I saw.

In a panic I scrounged for a foreground. I was fortunately able to just adjust my planned northwest view to a west view. Maybe not the best, but I was happy to have anything to work with at that moment.

It was raining, and I had forgotten to bring a cloth to wipe the lens with. I’m sure it was a bit comical as I repeatedly had to squat over the camera and tug my shirt down to wipe the lens between photographs, but it mostly got the job done.

The panic continued as I tried to get it all captured before everything melted away, I first photographed the rainbow. The field of view was so wide that even at 14mm it was tight on the sides and I couldn’t get both the rainbow and much verbena in the same photograph. In addition to the centered image of the rainbow, I took an image to the left, and another to the right, hoping to blend them in later for a wider view. I then tipped the camera down to shoot the foreground to get more verbena. Knowing the foreground would be wider than the background when the final image was assembled, I shot the foreground in two instead of three, one to the left and one to the right. I used Focus Shift shooting to take images of the verbena that I could stack to hopefully get it all in focus. The wind was getting nasty again, but fortunately there were a couple breaks I was able to take advantage of.

Walking back to the car later, I worried about wind movement, water spots, focus issues, etc., etc. I wondered if I actually had usable images to stack and stitch. Fortunately it all worked out. (Which was good, because from there the weather got much worse for the rest of my stay in Anza Borrego. In addition, after Anza Borrego I planned to shoot for two days in the Mojave National Preserve. When I got there, they had closed it due to the weather. Ah, the best laid plans…)