Sunflowers

Sunflowers-Orton_1509, originally uploaded by Sue Gannaway.

I love this time of year when the fields ripen and the sunflowers show their bright "sunny" faces! On our return trip Sunday from North Dakota, we passed this beautiful sunflower field north of Bowman. The play of the clouds, shadows, and contrasting colors of the fields begged me to stop. I played around in post production creating an Orton effect (or slightly blurring and lighting the scene in several layers) to give it a softer feel. The only downside was the 25 mph North Dakota wind, which made keeping the sunflowers sharp a little tougher, but using several high speed bursts I managed to "freeze" the front ones long enough.