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)

Comments

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode. I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs. I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work. But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated. While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing. I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year. I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023. I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot . I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos. I started with a fashion grey seam...

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations. I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience. For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions. I used ISO 100 and 400. My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...

The Munchkin's Notebook

Search This Blog