Sunflower Fields with Rapunzel

On July 23^rd I did a session with the lovely Jennifer (Instagram: thenext.jeration) out at the McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area sunflower fields.  She chose to cosplay as Rapunzel from Tangled for this session.   

For this session I used:

Photography Equipment

Cannon 80D 1 light stands 2 speedlight (1 acted as a trigger)

Now sunflower sessions can be hit or miss depending on how far the sunflowers are into their bloom, how tall the sunflowers are, time of day, and weather.  But mostly it comes down to how the sunflowers look and the weather.  Thankfully we scheduled the session right at peek bloom and only a few of the flowers were past peek.  Though I don’t believe the fields were as lush as in the past. The weather was good, and I’m glad we did a morning session as it was already hot out at 9:00AM. 

Camera Settings

For this session I used ISO 200. My aperture ranged from F7.1 to F16, with the most common aperture being F14. My Shutter speed ranged from 1/160s to 1/250s with the most common shutter speed being1/200s.  My focal length very from 18mm to 130mm with the most common lengths being 18mm and 32mm. I shot with a very small aperture for two reasons, first it was super sunny outside so I needed to stop down to align with my flash sync speed, and second it allowed me a greater depth of field to ensure the model and as many sunflowers as possible were in focus.  My shutter speed was high because I was exposing for the sky and then filling with the flash which allowed me to balance the light across the image.  

The Photos

Jennifer is a person I enjoy working with because of the excitement and joy she brings to the shoot, so we had a lot of fun during this shoot.  My favorite image from the session is of her smelling the sunflowers. I edited it two ways, the first was a standard edit and the second I pulled in some effects using a program called Boris FX Optics.  Let’s talk about the standard edit. The first thing I did was go through and adjust the white balance and the exposure, while enhancing the clarity and saturation.  I then added a blue/orange split tone to the image, with blues in the shadows and orange in the highlights.  I did this to balance the light from the flash with the sunlight.  What I should have done was add a ¼ cut CTO gel to the speed light to match the sunlight so it would be correct in camera. But it is an easy fix in Lightroom. I then pulled the image into Photoshop to clean up a few stray hairs and remove some of the lace front showing on the wig. I then finished the image off with a very light vignette.

ISO 200, Aperture F14, Shutter 1/200s, Focal Length 50mm

 

For the second edit of the image, I took the image and moved it into a program called Boris FX Optics. The company Boris FX specializes in special effect treatments for movies, so things like adding lasers and other worldly lighting effects. They took their expertise from movies and made a lighting effects package designed specifically for photographers.  In this instance I added a slight haze/glow to the image in the left corner. This effect could be achieved in camera with a filter or prism, or in Photoshop with a lot of work.  But the program adds the effect and adjusts all the lighting accordingly, it is like magic. I felt the slight haze/glow worked well for the image.

This next image, I feel is simply dreamy. In this image the flash was placed directly in front of the model to balance out the backlighting coming from the sun behind her.  To edit the image, I first did the basic Lightroom edits adjusting white balance and exposure.  I also adjusted the clarity and vibrancy slightly. I then added a blue/orange split tone to warm the image up and make the flash less obvious. From there I pulled the image into Photoshop to clean up a few stray hairs and some slight distractions. I then pulled the image into Boris FX Optics to add something called light leakage. Light leaking used to happen on film cameras if you didn’t seal the camera correctly or your lens was loose. You can also sometimes get a similar effect if you shoot into the sun resulting in lens flair. They also now make lens filters that will amplify this effect.  I didn’t have any of that, so I relied on post processing. Usually, I do not like this hazy light leak effect but in this situation, I think it works.  I feel the effect adds a dreamy element to the photo and softens it to bring that fairytale element to the image.

ISO 200, Aperture F14, Shutter 1/200s, Focal Length 35mm

I like when the person I’m working with comes up with suggestions for poses or locations during the shoot.  It helps me as a photographer, and allows for better collaboration during the session.  The model saw this tall sunflower towering over the rest of the field, and I could tell she wanted to shoot by it.  I told her if she could get to it, the flower rows can be dense and hard to walk in, we can shoot by it.  She went for it and we got this fun little image.  I think this last image embodies the Rapunzel characters happiness and inquisitiveness. For this image I did the basic Lightroom and Photoshop edits as I did for the previous images. I kept this image very clean and did not add any special lighting effects to it, because I felt they would have detracted from the simplicity of the image.

ISO 200, Aperture F13, Shutter 1/250s, Focal Length 18mm

Overall, I’m very happy with how this session went.  I’m also glad I brought in another editing tool for some of the images. I will not be bringing effects like this to all my images just select ones, because I feel it can be easily overdone and hide the actual technical skill of the photographer.  However, in this case I feel the effects worked to enhance the overall image.

 

Credits:

Cosplayer: Jennifer (Instagram: thenext.jeration)