Color me Yellow

About a mile from my house are three sunflower fields, and when I say fields, I mean FIELDS. Not small patches, but big spreads. There are acres and acres of sunflowers planted in a wildlife refuge in three separate plots. They stretch as far as the eye can see in one direction and farther than you want to walk in another direction. They are just stunning. I first found those fields two years ago. I stumbled upon them when the flowers were in bloom and thought I’d died and gone to heaven. They were so gorgeous I literally lay on the ground beneath them and giggled at their shiny yellow faces. Last year, I anxiously waited all summer for those flowers, and drove out there in August to find....corn. Corn. Tall stalks of plain old corn. I’ve never been so disappointed in all my life.


Last Saturday I saw a post on Facebook that they were in bloom again, and I nearly broke my neck trying to get there. As I rounded the curve right at the first field and saw those thousands of golden blooms, I hollered, “Woo hoo!” out loud. Honestly, nothing makes a photographer happier than a big old field of sunflowers. I spent an hour shooting pictures and went back Sunday for more. And I called a bride that I’m shooting pictures for in October and November and told her to grab her dress and head my way this week so we can take bridal pictures in those fields. Won’t that be fun? I ran into several photographer friends at the fields this weekend, and several other people stopped their cars long enough to snap a picture or two while I was out there. It’s quite a popular place right now.

I’ll be sharing pictures of the flowers with you this week, but in the meantime I’m showing you the self portraits I took there Sunday. They were simply to express the joy I get from that place. Good thing I was by myself. They might have hauled me off to the nuthouse if I’d been caught jumping up and down in the field all by myself.