A senior session in the sunflowers

Sunflower fields peak fast. They are worth about a week and a half, and only in the last hour of daylight, because sunflowers face east and by evening you are shooting the backs of them unless you get in among the rows.

We shot her low and inside the rows so the blooms sit at shoulder height and the sun comes through the petals rather than over the top of them. That is what gives the yellow that glow instead of a flat wall of color.

The second half of the session moved to the fence line and a brick wall nearby, so the gallery is not twenty versions of the same yellow frame.

Sunflower fields are almost all privately farmed, which people do not expect. The ones that open to the public do it for a short window and usually charge a few dollars a head, and the rest need a conversation with whoever owns the ground. That call is worth making a week ahead rather than turning up and finding a locked gate, and it is the part of a session like this that we handle.