Skip to main content

Sunflowers

Every year there are several sunflower fields planted at McKee-Besher Wildlife Management Area, in Poolesville, MD. The reached peak bloom on July 13 and should be at peak for the next two weeks.  So every year photographers and everyone else travels to the area to see around 48 acres of sunflowers.  Since I have been hearing about these field for the past couple years, I decided it was time to go and see them for myself.   So I got up around 6:30 AM to make the hour drive over to Maryland to see the sunflowers.

It was pretty easy to find the first set of fields because the parking lot was full, and there were lots of people loading and unloading camera, tri-pods and ladders. They use the ladders to be able to shoot down onto the fields, though the sunflowers are only about 3 – 5 feet tall depending on the field. I passed up this first area and headed further down River Road to Sycamore Landing Road where the other field was located.  I parked at the parking area then walked down the road to the field. I’m very glad I had the super strong bug spray (99% DEET) and my hiking boots because there were a lot of bugs and it was very muddy.  The sunflowers in this area were around 3 – 4 feet tall. There were also several bumble bees, which basically ignored me.   When I was done in this area I drove back to the first parking area, which cleared out, along River Road to do a little shooting there.

For this photo shoot I used both my 18 – 200 mm lens, 60mm macro lens and a graduated neutral density filter with me.  I did also pack tri-pod and ladder both of which I did not use.  The neutral density filter worked great on the sky.  I could meter off the sunflowers without blowing out the sky, thus keeping it nice and blue.  I was shooting at an ISO 200, with an f8 –f16, and a shutter speed around 1/150s depending on the light.  I ended up 71 shots that I liked.  Overall it was a very productive morning.   You can see the photos here McKee-Besher Sunflower Gallery.

As a side-note I would love to shoot in the area again, but with a model dressed in Civil War era sundress or maybe something more creative.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pumpkin Barron

On October 12th, I had the pleasure of working with the marvelous SunnyRae .   The general theme for the shoot was pumpkins but with coordination on outfits with SunnyRae theme evolved into official portraits of an 18 th century Pumpkin Baron. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 1 Westcott Strobe 1 rectangular soft box 1 strip box 1 6x6 silver reflector 2 C-stands 1 light stand Boom arm Color checker clamps Sandbags Backdrop stand Rough canvas backdrop Pumpkins Rough canvas drop cloth Flowers Old trunk Books Letters Wooden crate Fake leaves Chair Tri-level plant stand     The set up I wanted to keep this set up a bit rustic yet give the feel of staged aristocratic painting of the time.  I started with a plain rough canvas backdrop then placed an ol...
Post a Comment
Read more

Night Queen

On September 28th, I did a session with May.   This session’s theme was designed around a Halloween headpiece I made a couple of years ago but never got to shoot.   The vibe of the overall shoot was dark queen. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 rectangular soft boxes grids 2 C-stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Fuzzy grey backdrop Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps 2 trilevel plant stands Fake candles Goblets Fake flowers Black fabric Silver fabric Large Styrofoam block Dowel Rods Skulls Fake moss Dry ice   The set up I tried to keep this setup simple in nature.  I started with the base of a fuzzy grey backdrop to which I added a “throne” made from a large Styrofoam block, some dowel rods, and a piece of black fabric.  To that I added two flower pot hol...
Post a Comment
Read more

Belle Island with Central VA Cosplayers

On October 19 th I drove down to Richmond, VA to attend a Central VA Cosplay Photoshoot meetup on October 20 th at Belle Island.   I wanted to go to this event because it was in an interesting location, and I wanted to meet some new cosplayers.   For this session I used: Canon R6 2 Speed light Trigger 1 Light stands 24 - 105mm lens Gels Camera Settings: For this shoot, I was transitioning back and forth between being inside an old, dark, abandoned building to bright, sunny woods.  Due to the transitions, my settings varied greatly.  I mostly shot at ISO 100 except for when I accidently bumped the nob to “Auto” and didn’t notice, so I also took shots at ISO 2500, 3200, 4000, and 6400.  The shots at the high ISO actually look fairly decent, and not as grainy as one would expect.  My shutter varied between 1/100s to 1/250s with the most common shutter speed being 1/250s.  My aperture varied between F5 to F11 with the most common ap...
Post a Comment
Read more