Leslie Madsen

Leslie Madsen lives in Denver, Colorado and spends summers hiking in the Rocky Mountains; over the last ten years she's also hiked in Slovenia, Italy, France, Canada, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina. Always a fan of flowers, it's only been the last few years that she's spent time documenting the wildflowers she's found on these hikes. Madsen believes that amateur photographers are now citizen scientists as the collision forces of climate change and overpopulation are changing the landscapes...See more

Leslie Madsen lives in Denver, Colorado and spends summers hiking in the Rocky Mountains; over the last ten years she's also hiked in Slovenia, Italy, France, Canada, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina. Always a fan of flowers, it's only been the last few years that she's spent time documenting the wildflowers she's found on these hikes. Madsen believes that amateur photographers are now citizen scientists as the collision forces of climate change and overpopulation are changing the landscapes faster than any of us could have predicted. The Tour du Mont Blanc which Madsen hiked in July of 2019 contained an amazing garden of wildflowers, most of which were unfamiliar to her, thus leading to many months of research and the publishing of this book. Her photos have been featured in coffeeshops in Denver and in bookstores in Boulder County. But it's not just the views from the top she enjoys, it's the eye-candy (wildflowers) along the way that she finds most interesting. In addition to taking pictures of well-known wildflowers found in Colorado such as columbines and Indian paintbrush, she has recently began hunting native orchids such as the Cypripedium parviflorum (yellow lady's slipper) and the Calypso bulbosa (pink fairy slipper). See less