Sunnyflower

Sunflower in the sun

This picture was shot in the castle gardens of Arcen in the south of The Netherlands. We visited my parents who where having their holiday closeby there and went for a leisury afternoon to these castle gardens with the four of us.

There was an exhibition of sculptures at that moment in the gardens, however the flowers just had more attention for me. It was in the midst of July in 2015 with the sun giving all of it’s energy (read: it was hot!). When walking through the gardens, I saw this sunflower standing in the sun. I tried photographing it from below with the sky behind it. I just made the shot, not worrying about any settings. When I saw the photo, I realized that I still had the settings of the photo’s I made from the statues indoors.

Due to those settings, the photo was very bright. However, it gave the sunflower a great soft filtered blend to the sky. It was almost like the sunflower was blending with the sunny sky… A sunnyflower :-). In the end I really liked the results!
The camera was set at aperture priority with an ISO of 400. The actual aperture was still on F 1.4 due to the lower light settings indoors where the statues were situated. I focussed on the midpoint of the sunflower and my camera went all the way to 1/4000th of a second because of all the light that came in 🙂

In post I did absolutely nothing; it was just perfect how it ended up! The picture was made on the spot, without any fancy settings, without any accesoires and without any post-processing in post production. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location