Exploring Sunflower Photos – with Simple Photography Tips

Five simple photography tips on how to get detailed sunflower photographs - Camera and Phone Camera

• Cloudy days give quite flat images whereas Sunny days allow detail to show

• Vary Your Angles to Add Character

• Different flowers have different artistic potential as they vary in how much is open

• Observe the many patterns and take a range of images

• Insects add character

  
  

This Simple Photography Tips article is to celebrate the summer holidays, and the arrival of those most wonderful things that light up much of the continental countryside, and many of our gardens - the Sunflower - helianthus annuus

With the summer holidays in swing, and lots of young people looking for things to do, and maybe parents looking for things to do together, why not go for some 'photo-time' together. This wonderful plant offers much by way of photography.

Whilst whole fields-full can provide wonderful scenic images, the individual flowers, along with the bugs and beasties that visit them, are an amazingly rich source of macro and semi-macro images.

If you've a camera with close-up facility, great, use it. If you're using a phone, great, don't let it's restrictions affect your personal inspiration.

All the images on this blog were taken last week in Warwickshire, England. I'd travelled up to do a Family Photo-session and was staying at an Airbnb in Avon Dassett. While my chilli was cooking I wandered outside to where the owner had decorated the side of the parking area with a row of sunflowers.

I used my i-phone 14 pro. As long as you don't try to get toooooo close, the images are acceptable for personal use, and maybe a medium sized print on your wall. I was too lazy to unpack my Nikon!

Let's run through these pictures and I'll make a few comments that may help you.

Image One - Sunflower - helianthus annuus, with bumblebee

Image One, a general shot of the flower, gives a broad view of pretty much the whole flower by way of illustration.

The petals themselves would provide wonderfully textured images, as you will see further down this article where I've included a ladybird for more interest, or should I say, different interest?

Image Two - Sunflower - helianthus annuus, in full bloom

Images Two and Three show the centre of two different blooms.

This highlights one of the marvels of this flower, the slow and gradual opening of the 'disk florets', and with them the anthers. A continued feast for all the beasties that fly in for a meal.

The upper image shows all the disk florets, bar a few, are open, and just a few anthers left to attract pollinators. I love the rounded 'fullness', and the plant will already be starting to turn each fertilised floret into a sunflower seed.

Image Three - Sunflower - helianthus annuus - partly open

Image three illustrates the centre of a less open flower, with 'development' of the disc florets still taking place in the middle - the patterns and neatness are a wonderful source of photographic art.

Image Four - Sunflower - helianthus annuus -macro

Image Four is an example of taking a phone camera to it's limit in terms of macro, if you were to go any closer you might lose some definition, or focus

It does however, illustrate the wonderful patterns that can be achieved in flower photography

Image Five - Sunflower - helianthus annuus - macro

Skipping down to Image Five, we're zoomed in close to the same flower as in image two, with the almost completely opened flower, and just a few anthers with their pollen. A very different image in terms of art, but I think just as exciting.

Let's face it, just about everything about a sunflower is exciting, photographically

I'll be doing another article to inspire you to even more sunflower pictures - it will include the bugs and beasties!