A bicolor sunflower

Of late, I’ve enjoyed visiting the sunflower farm at Herrington’s Pumpkins in Washington County. Last year, I got some great photos there, and this year, I hoped to capture some more.

I brought along two cameras – my Nikon F2S (“Nikon Athena”) and the Pentacon Six (which has still not earned a nickname). My film shots with both cameras will be posted a few weeks later in the blog, but I also captured a couple of shots with my Google Pixel 6 Pro cell phone camera.

One of the problems with photographing sunflowers is that you want to capture the sunflower beauty with the sunflower bloom facing the sun. This is fantastic if you’re photographing in the morning; but Herrington’s opens to the public at 5:00 p.m., so I’m getting a lot of shots of sunflowers with direct sun in my focus. Nobody to blame here, I just have to work with what’s available.

Even if it meant turning one sunflower towards me to capture it and a pollen-drunk bee on the flowerhead.

Oh yeah. That looks really great with my big pale arm in the photo. No. Absolutely not, no.

I wandered around the eight acres of sunflower blooms.

And just at that right moment …

I found it.

A hybrid sunflower with brown-yellow petals. Facing directly into the setting sun.

Okay, Miller. Squeeze off a few frames with the Pentacon.

Got it.

And now some shots with Nikon Athena. Oh, crud. I’ve got the 28mm wide-angle on here. Did I pack the 55mm f/1.2 prime lens in my camera bag? Quick glance. Yes I did. Swap out the lenses, get some more shots.

Now as I said before, you’ll see those in a few weeks when they come back from the developers.

That being said …

Look at what I snagged with the Google Pixel 6 Pro.

Wow. That’s an incredibly vibrant image.

Okay. New plans. I’m calling an audible.

I haven’t yet designated my four entries for the Durham Fair, my final shot at Competition Season 2022.

I could enter this image in the Durham Fair as a last-minute swap-out for something else.

What do you think, blog readers? Should I call an audible and put this in my final competition of the year, or save it for Competition Season 2023?

Besides, I still haven’t seen my slide film shots, so maybe there’s a better capture of this sunflower in those images. Such questions. Hmm.