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Sunflowers and a Pirate Balloon


I went to the McKee-Besher Wildlife Management Area to photograph the annual sunflower fields.  I did this last year and found I would lose track of where I set my bag, so this year I tied a balloon to it.  The balloon happened to be a large pirate balloon (I gave it to a little kid when I was done), which got me many stares from other photographers in the area.  One person came up to me and asked what the balloon was for; one I told him it was to mark my stuff, he was like that is a great idea never thought of that.  The balloon also worked as a great piece of juxtaposition within the sunflower field.  I got several nice shots of the field, not so many with the balloon since the breeze would make it dip down to low.  However, what I would love to do; is do a portrait session in one of the fields. I think a nice earthy shoot, with big floppy hats and breezy dresses or the earth child/hippy look would be perfect out in the field. The other thing that would be fun would be to do a cosplay portrait session.  




I photographed the field using both a 60mm macro lens and my trusty 18-200mm lens.  I used a 200 ISO with an aperture set to 9.0f; I did go down to as low as 4.0f for some macro shots and as high as 22f for some long shots.  I kept the shutter speed above 1/100 of second, due to the breeze, but was mostly faster than that.  I did use a circular polarizer for a few shots as well as a graduated neutral density filter to compensate for the bright sky. 
(Gallery)

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