Last year the peak sunflower season was pretty cloudless, leaving me with few good skies to pair with the fields of gold. Worried about not having a field in bloom if a good sunset did show, I started scouting which nearby fields were getting sunflower plantings early in the spring. A few of the fields last year had nice valley oaks complimenting the sunflowers. I was a little upset when most of those ended up as tomatoes or alfalfa this time. But once the first flowers opened up I didn't care about trees and let the flowers do their thing.
The first field I found with seedlings was just north of Woodland on CR 102, a few minutes past the Costco. Luck was on my side when the skies cooperated and brought some clouds in just as the flowers began to open up. I slid down the rows of the smaller, male flowers and started shooting away.
I was pretty happy with these first shots and was ready for some great color in the sky after sunset. But the weather system that brought in the clouds also brought in the wind. Sunflower plants are tall and top heavy. Even gentle breezes can move the flower heads a lot. As the sun dipped and the light dimmed it was really hard to keep my shutter speed high enough to capture the flowers without the motion blur of them swaying in the winds. Those high shutter speeds had to be achieved thru larger apertures which led to a shallower depth of field. The photos became more like portraits of individual flowers than a show of the whole field.
I've shot a lot of landscapes intentionally with this large aperture method and though I didn't plan to shoot this way I like the results.
Two nights later the clouds were out again so I headed back to this field for another try. I met up with Mir's friend Carson from her work who wanted to get some nice sunflower shots, too. But the skies didn't produce like they had before. The best clouds were to the south and I tried find a good set of flowers to match the cloud patterns.
There was a little bit of color after the sun set, but nothing extraordinary.
The next week I waited for another good sunset for sunflowers but nothing really materialized. So I took a flower break and tried to get the waxing crescent moon setting over the Capitol in Sacramento.
Not as great as I'd hoped. I wanted more sunflowers.
I kept an eye on the weather reports as a field just down the street from our house came into bloom. On an evening with a few clouds I took Abby out to investigate.
She liked exploring the secret tunnels formed by the giant leaves of the plants while I shot away.
The next night proved to have some better clouds so Abby and I headed out again.
I felt pretty lucky to have had a few nice sunsets quickly into this season. But pretty soon we were back to clear summer skies. Sunflowers only look good for a week, two at most, before their heads get too heavy with seed. Not wanting to waste the their short bloom time I went out at night to try some starry sky shots.
One of the nice things about summer in the Sacramento valley is the delta breeze that cools off our nights and brings some relief from the scorching afternoons. The temperature out at the field was great. But the breeze was blowing all the flowers around so much it was nearly impossible to get a shot with the flowers still enough. I got one shot with a faint Milky Way visible just outside of town.
I didn't really expect the skies to be extraordinary so close to Davis and was ready to try again. After a break for a road trip to weddings in San Diego and Portland I spotted a field up I-5 from Woodland about to bloom. I seemed like it was far enough from the city lights to see the galaxy better. I waited until the moon was into its waning quarter phase and went out to try star trails and more galaxy shots.
The shooting star on the right side was really bright and stretched almost across the whole horizon over the tree. But when I combined the 90 photos into the star trails composite above it ended up fading into the other photo layers. The field was right along the freeway and the passing cars helped light up the flowers. But all that light also diminished the intensity of the Milky Way.
When the sunflowers get big they tend to only face east. Thankfully these were still just young enough that some were facing northwest following the sunset. The tree I'd hoped would align nicely with the galaxy and sunflowers was a little off. Despite walking carefully up and down several rows of flowers I couldn't find a good alignment of north facing flowers, the tree, and the galaxy.
As July ended I was pretty sure the sunflowers days were done for the year. But on another late night expedition I found one more field just blooming. Again it was a windy night but this time the blur makes the photo more interesting. Not spectacular but still different.
I think the farmers and I would both agree this season turned out to be a pretty good one for the sunflower crops.
