Rocky Mountain Wildflowers — Rocky Mountain Wildflowers Field Guide

Photographing wildflowers close up, remember your camera records everything you see in the view finder or on the LCD screen. It will record the beauty of your subject when it is sharply focused and it pops out from its background that is kept out of focus. Be mindful, your camera will also record ugly dead sticks, wilting petals or even bug-eaten leaves. In close up shots, make the flowers look at you, which means that often you will have to get down to the same level as the flower that is just inches off the ground.    Pasque Flower and...

      One early-blooming beauty is hard to find and endangered by collectors in the Colorado Rockies. If one has a keen eye and a little luck, he or she just might spot a Fairy Slipper or Calypso Orchid growing in shaded forests among leaf litter on the forest floor. This tiny exotic plant, Calypso bulbosa, is a member of the Orchid Family and has 3 slender pink petal-like sepals, 2 small petals, and one bulb-like petal that forms the slipper shape. A single leaf appears before the blossom appears and remains until the flower goes to seed. Plants grow from...

   My husband, Bernie Nagy, and I co-published our second award-winning coffee table book, South Park, Colorado: Nature’s Paradise in 2012 that included photographs and common names of over 100 wildflowers. Soon afterwards, we began receiving many inquiries for a smaller book of wildflowers to take on trails. I began working on Rocky Mountains Wildflowers Field Guide to fulfill those requests. Bernie had taken a several thousand photographs of Colorado Wildflowers over the past few years, so I began writing a compact guide with the idea to have detailed clear photographs, names, and a brief description of each wildflower. A...