The Creative's Corner

Last night I attended a presentation at The Well Red Coyote bookstore  by photographers/writers Colleen Miniuk-Sperry and Paul Gill. They gave an excellent talk on photographing wildflowers, based on their new book “Wild In Arizona, Photographing Arizona’s Wildflowers.”

If you photograph wildflowers in Arizona, you must buy this book. It’s full of great information that will save you a lot of time and energy. Some of the things you’ll find in their book include:

• Maps of hiking trails that not only list what flowers you can find on the trail, but where on the trail you will find them.
• There’s also a good description of each trail, and a listing of when the flowers bloom, the best time of day to shoot, what kind of vehicle you need to reach the trail and how difficult the trail is to hike.
• A bloom calender that lists all the trails in the book and what month flowers, cactus, trees and shrubs bloom.
• A list of flowers by color, so if you need a picture of a specific color of flower, you can find it easily.
• Links to useful websites.

The book also has a lot of information on photography basics and predicting when wildflowers will bloom. They have also sprinkled great little tips on photography and equipment throughout the book.

If you photograph Arizona wildflowers, you know how unpredictable their bloom is from year to year. But with “Wild In Arizona” much of the guesswork will be removed, and your chances of finding the flowers you want will greatly increase.

I don’t often recommend buying photography books as I find them to be too general, and they don’t usually contain information that’s very useful. But “Wild In Arizona” is definitely the exception to the rule. I strongly suggest that wildflower, nature and landscape photographers in Arizona BUY THIS BOOK.

You can purchase “Wild In Arizona” at www.wildinarizona.com for $24.95 for the print version and $12.95 for the ebook version. The time you will save, and the frustration you will avoid, is more than worth the cost of this book.

Have Fun,
Jeff