A Voice for Wildflowers Blog
CELEBRATING NATIONAL WILDFLOWER WEEK WITH ROB BADGER AND NITA WINTER
By Sarah Dillemuth MCE NEWS The first week of May is National Wildflower Week. This year, MCE is celebrating the week by highlighting Rob Badger and Nita Winter, who are local climate activists and long-time wildflower photographers.
Please tell us about yourselves.
Rob: I’ve been photographing nature for over 50 years, and I began to see the damage being done to the environment.
California Blooming: NOW OPEN
California Blooming: Wildflowers and Climate Change,” a large print version of "Beauty and Beast: California's Wildflowers and Climate Change" just opened at the San Diego Natural History Museum (the Nat) on Friday April 6, 2021. Prints up to 12’ tall will take you into some of southern California’s past superblooms.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST CALIFORNIA WILDFLOWERS AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Reviewed by Kristine Morris FOREWORD REVIEWS Beauty and the Beast is the story of an imperiled glory. Part of an inspiring documentary art project created by conservation photographers Rob Badger and Nita Winter, it highlights California’s famed wildflower “superblooms” that, when conditions are favorable, herald the arrival of spring with a riotous display
North Bay photographers’ new book captures diversity of native flowers, encourages conservation
By Meg McConahey THE PRESS DEMOCRAT It was just another shoot for nature photographer Rob Badger as he headed down to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve back in 1992. But when he arrived at the state reserve in northern Los Angeles County, he was gobsmacked by the extravagance of its wildflowers — which is saying something for a veteran shooter accustomed to training his lenses on the earth’s wonders.
Despite 11-month closure, Natural History Museum has been a beehive of activity since March
UPDATE:
California Blooming: Wildflowers and Climate Change in the Golden State
Exhibit Opens on April 2 ~~~~
By Pam Kragen UNION TRIBUNE Like all of the museums in Balboa Park, the San Diego Natural History Museum has been locked down for most of the past year.
The perpetually swinging Foucault pendulum in the lobby hangs still. Glass cases holding rare and antique books are draped with heavy cloths to protect their sensitive pages from light. And the fourth-floor administrative offices have been empty since the pandemic’s arrival last March.
Nita Winter’s wildflower photography is a blooming success
By Aviva Luttrell CLARK NOW Nita Winter ’76 and Rob Badger had never witnessed anything like it. As far as the eye could see, fields of brilliant orange wildflowers blanketed California’s Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve, rippling like waves as the wind swept across the ground on a spring day in 1992.
Rob Badger and Nita Winter: 5 Things We Must Do To Inspire The Next Generation About Sustainability And The Environment
By Penny Bauder AUTHORITY MAGAZINE As part of my series about what we must do to inspire the next generation about sustainability and the environment, I had the pleasure of interviewing Rob Badger and Nita Winter.
In Wildflowers’ Beauty, A Call to Action
By Kathy Morrison FLORA MAGAZINE, CALIFORNIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY The beauty of a wildflower is ephemeral, and much more so when viewed in the shadow of climate change. Will the same species of flower bloom in the same spot next year, next decade, next century? If not, will future generations know what has been lost?
California’s wildflower blooms: 27 years of photos track the changing climate
By Sam Whiting SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE The first time landscape photographer Rob Badger saw the wildflowers bloom in the Mojave Desert, he drove directly to a grocery store pay phone and put in a collect call to his partner, Nita Winter. She accepted the call in Marin City, and when his verbal description proved insufficient, he jumped in his car, drove six hours home to pick her up and then six hours back to the desert to prove it to her.
California Wildflowers and Climate Change
By Matthew Harrison Tedford BAY NATURE MAGAZINE Rob Badger began photographing nature and the California desert when he was 18, having moved from the East Coast to Los Angeles for college. Eventually what was a passion and a hobby turned into a career documenting environmental destruction, from clear-cutting to mining. Roughly 25 years after those first photographic forays, a visit to the desert once again shaped his work.
Beauty and the Beast: California Wildflowers and Climate Change
By Jennifer Jewell PACIFIC HORTICULTURE MAGAZINE In 1992, conservation photographer Rob Badger first experienced a rare and spectacular display of California wildflowers in the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve, a state park in the Mojave Desert. Not wanting his partner and fellow photographer, Nita Winter, to miss what he was seeing, he returned to San Francisco to get her. They quickly drove back to the desert to enjoy and photograph this beauty together.
A voice for wildflowers: Marin City photographers see their work as ‘art to action’ on climate change
By Vicki Larson MARIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL Melting ice caps, drought, rising sea levels and wildfires are what usually come to mind when we hear about climate change.
Photographers Nita Winter and Rob Badger would like you to think about wildflowers instead.
Not because they’re beautiful to look at, but because climate change is changing their habitat and that has huge consequences for all sorts of wildlife that depend on them.