Confused: Night or Day?

After shooting the awesome sunrise I featured in yesterday’s post (“What A Way To Wake Up!”), I hiked around the prairie and photographed other wildflowers and insects. When I came to a large patch of Helianthus sunflowers, I looked up and saw the moon peaking over the wonderful cluster of sunflowers. It was a bit tricky … getting very low and shooting up high, especially with the winds beginning to pick up (Snowball Hill Prairie, being on a hill and hillside, seems to always have wind present) … to capture the wildflowers in sharp focus instead of yellow blurs. But with a little patience and timing the captures when the wind would temporarily subside, it worked out pretty nicely! Here are some photos I captured:

Helianthus Sunflowers

Helianthus Sunflowers

And then I saw the moon, high over the wildflowers:

Helianthus Sunflowers and the moon

Helianthus Sunflowers and the moon

It should be noted that to capture both the sunflowers and the moon, at extreme distances from each other, I needed to capture 2 images, one of the sunflowers in sharp focus and one of the moon in sharp focus. I later composited the 2 images in Photoshop. I really wanted to capture the situation in one image, but even using f/32 I was unable to capture crisp images of both subjects in the frame.

I’m not totally certain, but I believe these sunflowers are Sawtooth Sunflowers (Helianthus grosseserratus). This species can grow to 16-feet tall. I didn’t see any that tall, but many were taller than me :o)

Photographic Equipment Used:

  • Canon 5D Mark 3 body
  • Canon 180mm, f/3.5 macro lens
  • Bogen 3221 Tripod with ballhead
  • ISO 500
  • Aperture f/3.5 (top 2 images), f/32 (other sunflower images), and f/22 (crisp moon image)
  • Shutter 1/40 sec. to 1/640 sec.

 

 

Posted in Astrophotography, Landscape Photography, Macro Photography, Nature Photography, Wildflowers
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