Petal Pageant

As the days lengthen and the sun warms the landscape, spring wildflowers sprout up across the state’s biomes. In this collection, photographer Richard Hamilton Smith captures glimpses of color and moments of stillness from the Arrowhead region down to the prairies of southern Minnesota.

“Spring’s burst of colors is exciting to photograph after a long and monochromatic winter,” says Smith, who gets up close and personal with his subjects to highlight their delicate details. One of his biggest challenges is “trying not to trample and damage the nearby blossoms, especially if lying upon the ground to be at their level.”

Asked to pick a favorite region of Minnesota for photographing spring flowers, Smith has a hard time choosing. “Each location has its unique kind of bloom,” he says, adding that “the immersion in color with the interplay of light and their shapes, textures, patterns” is one of the aspects of his work that he enjoys the most.