LOCAL>> A 27-Year Wildflower Journey – Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change

Rob Badger and Nita Winter will take you behind the scenes on their 27-year journey photographing wildflowers throughout California.

It began in 1992 when they discovered and fell in love with California’s spectacular wildflower blooms in the Mojave Desert’s Antelope Valley California Poppy Preserve. Photographing these beautiful landscapes and individual flowers evolved into a documentary art project, Beauty and the Beast: Wildflowers and Climate Change. Their new multiple award-winning coffee table book, co-published with CNPS, focuses on California’s amazing plant diversity and is a companion to their traveling exhibition.

In the process of photographing super-bloom landscapes, Rob and Nita developed unique field techniques to capture one-of-a-kind images. They will discuss how they lugged 80 pounds of cameras and their “natural light” studio equipment from below sea level in Death Valley National Park to alpine meadows and 13,000-foot-high mountain passes.

Internationally acclaimed conservation photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter have been life partners and creative collaborators for more than three decades. Their work has been featured in Time, Mother Jones, Sierra, Flora, the New York Times, the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and the Los Angeles Times.