Capturing the Brightness Of The Sunflowers

Sunflowers 2, Warwick Queensland

Sunflowers are tall plants that grow to a height of around 300 centimetres. They bear one or more wide flower heads, with bright yellow ray florets at the outside and yellow or maroon (brown/red) disc florets inside. During their growth period, the sunflowers tilt during the day to face the sun, but they stop tilting once they begin to bloom. The tracking of the sun by the young sunflower heads is called heliotropism. By the time they are mature, sunflowers generally face east, the direction of the rising sun.

To me the sunflowers always give a feeling of cheerfulness and happiness due to their bright colour.

Sunflowers 1, Warwick Queensland

The first image above was aimed to show the wide expanse of the sunflower field and was captured with the Nikkor 28mm f/1.8G lens.

With the second image below my intention was to focus on one flower and throw the distant flowers out of focus to emphasise the larger flower at the front.

Sunflowers 2, Warwick Queensland

For the third image below I used the Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G lens with a smaller aperture to ensure that more of the sunflowers in the background were in focus.

Sunflowers 3, Warwick Queensland

For the last image below I was attempting to show the contrast of colours between the deep blue sky and the bright yellow colour of the sunflowers, this image was also with the 28mm lens.

Sunflowers 4, Warwick Queensland

In capturing images such as above, it is recommended that the images are carefully exposed in camera and take care not to over expose. Also a slight boost in saturation can help to improve the images. For all the above images I used the Nikon D810 camera.

The equipment I used above and  recommend for my photography can be purchased as follows at B&H.