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Posts Tagged ‘sunflowers’

Approaches to selfies

Posted in Art, Language, Photography, Portraits, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 18, 2022| 17 Comments »

Do you shoot selfies? Generally I am not a fan of selfies, at least not in the way that some people use (and overuse) them on social media—I am not that much in love with my own face. Still, I am not totally against them. I remember times in the past, when I was shooting with a film camera, when I would ask someone to take a picture of me in front of some well-known site or monument.

When I do want to insert myself into the frame, I try to do so in a creative way. When I was recently in the badlands of North Dakota, for example, I decided I wanted to try to create a selfie that conveyed a “bad boy” vibe. I really am a nice guy, so I wasn’t sure that I could pull off the look and was pleasantly surprised with the result. Some of my friends say the shot makes me look like I had just stepped off of a Harley.

I love to take photos just after sunrise and just before sunset when the sun is so low that it creates elongated shadows of me that are perhaps my favorite type of selfie, a selfie without a face. They always remind me of the famous sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, like Walking Man. I took the second photo with my iPhone in the early morning of 28 July as I stared out at the vast expanse of North Dakota badlands at Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

The final photo is an unusual kind of selfie, a selfie without a face or a body. My orange KIA Soul is a representation of me, a kind of symbolic representation of who I am. I sometimes describe my car as practical, economical, and a little quirky, descriptors that apply equally well to me.

bad boy in badlands

elongated shadow

KIA Soul

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Sunflowers for Ukraine

Posted in Flowers, Inspiration, Nature, sunflower, Ukraine, tagged , , , , , on March 1, 2022| 26 Comments »

Sunflowers were already Ukraine’s national flower, but they have emerged as a symbol of resistance after a widely shared video clip appeared to show a Ukrainian woman berating Russian soldiers, telling them to put sunflower seeds in their pockets so that flowers would grow after they died in battle—see this article in Business Insider India for more information on this subject.

I just listened the words of Ukrainian President Zelensky as he described the horrific Russian cruise missile strike on Freedom Square in the center of Kharkiv and the tears are still wet on my cheeks. These sunflowers photos that I have taken in recent years are a visual sign of my support for the ongoing heroic actions of the Ukrainian people. Please pray for all of those affected by Putin’s unprovoked war, especially the Ukrainians, who are paying the highest price.

sunflower for Ukraine

Sunflowers for Ukraine

Sunflower for Ukraine

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Sunflower views

Posted in Flowers, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , on August 9, 2017| 9 Comments »

When you are confronted with a field of sunflowers, what’s the best way to photograph them? That was my challenge this past weekend at McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area in Poolesville, Maryland. Before I arrived, I though I would get a wide-angle view, filled with the bright yellows of the tall sunflowers. The reality was a little underwhelming, because the sunflowers had not grown very tall this year and many of them were past their prime.

So instead of going wide, I decided to move in closer and try to capture some of the details of the sunflowers. Here are a few images of single sunflowers in different stages of development. Some of the images are a little abstract and hopefully challenge readers to think beyond the normal shapes and colors that they associate with sunflowers.

 

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sunflower

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sunflower

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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Indigo Bunting and Monarch

Posted in Birds, Butterflies, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2017| 14 Comments »

In the first sunflower field that we visited yesterday morning at McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area, many of the sunflowers were drooping because of the weight of their seeds. They may not have been very photogenic, but the birds and butterflies seemed to love them, like this Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) and this Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) that I spotted among the sunflowers.

Several photographer friends and I made the trip to the sunflower fields in Poolesville, Maryland, hoping to see endless rows of tall sunflowers. According to its website, McKee-Beshers has 30 acres of sunflowers planted in nine different fields. I think that the sunflowers may have been a little past their prime and appeared to be a little stunted in size, compared to some past years.

It was tricky to figure out what kind of gear to bring on a trek like this. I ended up using my super zoom Canon SX50 to photograph the Indigo Bunting, which was a first sighting for me of this beautiful bird, and my Canon 24-105mm lens on my normal Canon 50D DSLR for the butterfly. I had both of the cameras with me at all times, which gave me a pretty good amount of flexibility. I’ve seen some photographers walk around with two DSLR bodies, but that seems like a lot of weight to carry around, especially when you are moving through vegetation as I was doing as I waded through the rows of sunflowers.

I did take shot shots of the sunflowers  and I’ll post some of them eventually. Folks who know me, though, are probably not surprised that my first instinct was to post images of birds and butterflies, rather than ones of the flowers alone.

Indigo Bunting

Monarch butterfly

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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Sunflowers

Posted in Flowers, Nature, Photography, Summer, tagged , , , , , on July 25, 2016| 4 Comments »

The bright colors and distinctive shape of sunflowers never fail to bring a smile to my face. Here’s a shot of one from my trip last Friday to McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area in Poolesville, Maryland.

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Normally a shot like this is easy to get when the towering sunflowers reach tall into the sky. In reality, however, the sunflowers at this site were not that tall and I had to crouch low to the ground to capture this image. In addition, many of the sunflowers were a bit wilted and past their peak. One of my Facebook readers commented that it looked like the flowers had their heads bowed in prayer in the following shot, which gives you and idea of the conditions in one area of the field of sunflowers.

sunflower

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.

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Sunflowers make me happy

Posted in Butterflies, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Landscape, Nature, Photography, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on August 4, 2013| 9 Comments »

Different flowers affect me differently—some attract me with their beauty or their fragrance or their colors. Others produce an emotional response, like sunflowers, which invariably make me feel happy.

The sunflower’s large size, bright colors, and bold graphic design appeal to me. The sunflower virtually shouts its presence to the world—there is nothing soft and delicate and hidden about a sunflower.

Like this Easter Tiger Swallowtail butterfly (Papilio glaucus), I sometimes enjoy the flowers one at a time. It was really fun, though, to visit a large field of sunflowers last month with some friends and to see row after row of these cheery flowers. I wanted to capture a group shot of the sunflowers, but I struggled to find a way to do so effectively (even though we had even brought along a little stepladder to give us a perspective from above the flowers).

In the end, my favorite shot (the second one below) focuses on a single sunflower, with other flowers a blur in the background. I used a simple 50mm lens (often called the “nifty fifty”) on my camera to make sure that I could control the aperture and throw the background out of focus.

EasternTigerSwallowtail lorez

sunflowers_blog

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved

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