Each season has its own unique beauty, but there's something extra-special about early spring when the earth awakens with exuberance. Flowering trees and shrubs, elegant and fragrant, enhance the landscape with color. Gardens come to life, and after the crocus and daffodils bloom, it's time for one of the quintessential symbols of the season: tulips.

If you're partial to tulips, witnessing vast, vibrantly colorful fields showcasing row after row of blooms is a visually stunning experience. While the dream tulip destination would have to be the Netherlands, you can do quite nicely without leaving the United States.

Case in point: the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival in Oregon's Willamette Valley. It's been on my radar for quite a while. Last week I finally made it. What a delight!

Iverson Family Farms and the Tulip Festival

The Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival dates back to the mid-1980s, when the Iverson Family first opened their tulip fields to the public for Easter weekend. An inspired idea, this beloved annual tradition now runs for more than a month and is one of the three largest tulip festivals in the Pacific Northwest.

One million bulbs + 40 acres = a sea of breathtaking color.

This third-generation family-owned and operated farm manages more than 1,500 acres. The tulips are just one slice of the pie - but they're a big slice.

Clearly, a tremendous amount of work is devoted to hosting this event. In addition to the spectacularly beautiful flowers, the festival features a food and craft market, children's rides, and hot air balloon rides. An accessibility tour of the fields is available and runs throughout the day. There is ample covered outdoor seating adjacent to the market for guests to enjoy food and drink. The grounds are meticulously maintained.

Beyond all of that, what the Iverson Family has done to accommodate photographers is noteworthy. Purchase a sunrise admission and you can enter the fields at 5am. That same ticket allows for in-and-out privileges during the day, and in the evening you can stay until the sun sets - well past the last regular ticketed entry time of 5pm.

Drone permits are available for the early morning hours, too.

Balloons launch as the day breaks, so those pilots and passengers also need to start early, but I saw quite a few photographers in the fields before the sun came up.

Obviously, people have to be on the clock to staff the additional hours. Sincere thanks to the Iversons for making this possible.

Photographing the Tulips

Anything that involves timing (autumn foliage, wildflower blooms, etc.) is always a roll of the dice, especially when travel is involved. You might show up too early, or it could be way past peak. I had a little bit of schedule flexibility in that I was driving rather than flying, yet there was some anxiety since the flowers were way ahead of schedule.

I got lucky; the tulips were at peak bloom. Sometimes things work out nearly perfectly.

While I had a range of lenses with me, the three that got the most use were the 100-400mm zoom, the 24-70mm zoom, and the LensBaby Velvet 56mm.

After an initial stroll through the acreage to acquaint myself with the different varieties and become familiarized with the layout, I circled back to where I'd begun. Now I walked very slowly up and down the grass pathways, studying individual flowers.

While the "big picture" was stunning - mesmerizing, actually - with row after row of dazzling color, whenever I'm photographing blooms I tend to look closely for interesting details and little stories. I will admit to more than a little bit of anthropomorphism going on in my head where flowers are involved!

Another thing I enjoyed was looking for "wrong colored" flowers, like a lone red tulip in a sea of purple. Never has coloring outside the lines looked so lovely.

With a vast canvas of 40 acres, each day the hours slipped by quickly.

Following are a few of the enchanting sights - and some of the stories - I encountered in the festival fields.

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