Sunflowers

Hey David,

The location is just north of Snook off HWY 60, a couple miles before you cross the Brazos River. My daughter lives in Bryan, so I was visiting her that day. I live in Brenham and I pass through Snook on my way to and from Bryan/College Station. There was an article in a local paper about the sunflower field because it was attracting lots of local attention from people wanting to stop and take their photos among the sunflowers. According to the article, 365 acres is planted in sunflowers, and the man who owns the property is raising them to supply product for the bird seed industry. 

On my way home following my visit, I passed by there late afternoon as the sun was low on the horizon. HWY 60 runs NE - SW through that section, and this field of sunflowers is on the west side of the highway. The field isn't fenced and the farmer said in the article that he welcomes people to come take photos. Indeed, a large crowd was already gathered there when I passed by.

As for technical details...

I was using an "old school" manual Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 lens on my Olympus E-M1 MKII camera. The E-M1 MKII has a micro 4/3 sensor, which gives a 2X effective crop factor. Thus, in terms of field of view, the 25mm lens is equivalent to a 50mm lens on a full frame sensor camera. This lens is entirely manual; it has no electronic communication with the camera body, so it will not autofocus, set aperture, or meter for exposure electronically through the camera body. You have to manually focus and set your aperture on the lens itself. I enjoy using this lens occasionally because it helps sharpen my skills by requiring me to pay more attention to my settings and light conditions, and it just feels "retro." It also gives me a little more creative control than a full auto lens. Given that I was facing west, and given that the sunflowers were head-high, getting in close allowed me to block a lot of the afternoon sunlight by the sunflowers themselves. This helped me meter on the sunflowers in shade and not the bright western sunlight. In a couple shots, I positioned myself so that the sun was peeking through the leaves of the sunflowers, giving me the nice sunbursts. Because it was approaching dusk and because there were objects in the far background (power poles, power lines, irrigation equipment) that I didn't want to be in focus in the frame, I selected fairly open apertures - f2.8 - f/4.0. This not only gave me a blurred background, keeping only the closest plants in focus, but it helped with the "mood" I was seeking in the photos. I used a pretty fast shutter - 1/100 - 1/200, along with ISO 200 to help get more saturated evening colors and also to help with the "afternoon sunset" mood. I shoot in RAW format, so I then processed in Adobe Lightroom, where I adjusted highlights, shadows, and lighting to emphasize the warm evening colors.