I wanted to try to get one of those ubiquitous “sunset lens flare over the top of a sunflower field” shots recently, but I noticed two interesting things. One is that many fields I used to see full of sunflowers are now stocked with corn. The government’s tampering in the market by subsidizing ethanol is probably a factor in that. The other is that I’m a little late; all the fields I saw had sunflowers sporting tattered petals. There are still a bunch of these little yellow flowers left for some one-on-one time, but it looks like my plans for a stepladder and a field of beautiful golden sunflowers will have to wait until next season.
Pursuing perfect petals
Reply
You be the judge. This old stump is pretty wild looking, as if it came right out of some sort of sci-fi movie.
While blazing the back roads of Morton County I came across this corn field while admiring the tall, wispy clouds. I kept saying over and over that these reminded me of the clouds when I grew up in the Montana Rockies. I was starting to really miss the mountains when I came upon this field. I dashed over to nab the top of the stalks with the clouds behind, then darted back to the truck. My little boy had just called me to say that he had finished his schoolwork for the day and wanted some Daddy time, and asked me to come home as soon as possible! Zoom.
I spotted this little guy in the road near Hay Creek as I barreled toward him in my dually crew-cab work truck. I turned round down the street a ways to see if I actually saw what I thought I saw, then doubled back to find him. My coworker riding in the truck didn’t see anything, but I was positive and had to prove it to myself. I pulled off to a side street, waited for traffic to pass, and bolted over to a tiny little spot in the road.
When I say tiny, I wasn’t kidding. This little guy, yet to be named by my little boys, is pretty small. As a photography enthusiast I like to think I can pick out details in the world around me, but to spot a quarter-sized lump walking across the road has got to be a new personal best.
My little guy and I waited for the rain to pass and made a dusk voyage out to the east end of town and let the little turtle go. One could call him Lucky considering that he would likely have been pasted had he remained on East Rosser. In any case, he’s got a shot at survival now. He wouldn’t have made a good pet and I try to teach my boys to be responsible with nature, so it was a teachable moment. After all, Proverbs 12:10 says, “A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast…”
This is what I came up with in the morning. I was so pleased with the high, wispy clouds that I actually took some time to start framing and snapping instead of just scouting. I also took a little bit of time to check out the angles and see if it would work right:
This is the 
Then came the sunset. Sadly, as this location was well out of town, I missed the light I was hoping for by a mere five minutes or so. Despite that setback I was determined to come away with a shot I liked. As it turned out, having the sun absent made it a little easier to expose details in the shadows as well as the sky, and the clouds suddenly aligned in a symmetry that played very nicely off the reflective surface of the pond. I found myself okay with the fact that I’d missed the sun.
Going through some boxes of old books that my mom brought over from their house, I found these among the forgotten gems in those dusty old boxes. Pac Man themed Archie, a guide to defeating that darn Rubik’s Cube, and an orientation to my beloved Apple //c.
Pun intended. This was taken below Double Ditch recently as I took my sweetie and our little guys on a little adventure. On the one hand the clouds didn’t really light up with sunset colors the way I wanted, but on the other hand they were quite dramatic. I had a cool foreground and the colors of the waning sunset reflected brilliantly off the water. Not bad, after all. This is one of those that looked better at home than it did through the viewfinder.
One thing we’ve been short of lately is photogenic clouds. Ironically, those dry, hot August days haven’t been really conducive for great summer sunsets. In order for the sun to really provide a dramatic sunset, it needs some clouds to bounce its light, create shadows, and fill the sky with color. The other night we got just that kind of clouds.
The wispy tendrils of these clouds were of a type I haven’t seen in a while, so I was excited to bolt out to one of my frequent photo haunts to put them into perspective. Of course I used one of my favorite foreground features: an old windmill.
Now we have too many clouds to do much of a sunset photo at all, but the light rain is also a welcome sight. I didn’t get to chase sunsets much at all for most of this summer, and plan to do a lot more now that I’ve got the opportunity, so when the rainy days pass by I’m sure more shots like this will appear.