5 ways to create stunning sunflower images

Sunflowers are the epitome of warm, summer days 🌻🌻🌻. These vibrant, happy faces just can’t help but make you smile, and the bees can’t get enough of them too 🐝🐝 Paired with golden light and sunset colour it’s a feast for the eyes and a feel good for the soul. Sunflowers make a great landscape subject and are very versatile to shoot with lots of composition options. Here are 5 ways you can create stunning sunflower landscape images:

1. Fill your entire frame with sunflower faces

Choose a sunflower field stretching far away into the distance with your entire image filled with all their colourful faces. It might be necessary to focus stack your image to get the entire scene in focus though - the image below was made up of 4 separate shots focused at different points into the scene.

2. Pick one interesting sunflower for a close up shot

Every sunflower is unique, but when you are faced with an entire field to choose from, it can be hard to decide on a singular specimen to use. Look for a flower that is technically perfect, or sits on its own to get some distance from other flowers. Sunflowers that stand taller than others can be good to frame against the sky as a backdrop.

Also look for unusual aspects like sunflowers not yet open, faces that have broken petals to break up the consistency of the circular pattern, or sunflower faces with water droplets or bees on them. Be creative!

3. Capture a bee in action with a fast shutter speed

If there is one thing you are sure to find in a sunflower field, it is bees! They love walking over the centre of the sunflower collecting pollen as they go. As the face of a sunflower is quite large, the bees often will spend a good amount of time on a single sunflower making it easier to capture them than on smaller flowers like lavender. However, it still can be challenging capturing a sharp shot of a bee in flight, an a fast shutter speed is key. I recommend a minimum of 1/1000 seconds, you might find that you need to put your ISO up much higher to be able to get enough light for your image. When shooting moving subjects like this, I'll often put my ISO on AUTO with an upper limit of say 4,000 so that the camera will just choose settings that will have enough light for the shutter speed I've chosen.

4. Shoot in golden hour towards the sun for backlit golden petals

The time of day you shoot will really change the look and feel of your image. Waiting until the sun has sun low enough to cast golden light on the flowers makes for gorgeous backlighting. If you can combine this with an interesting sky that has clouds and rays, it will add to your overall effect.

5. Shoot a dramatic sunset sky with the sunflower field

Summer evenings often bring heavy clouds full of colour, with the ever present threat of thunderstorms. These evenings are often the best for shooting sunflowers. Why do I suggest sunsets rather than sunrises? Well in general, sunflowers will naturally be turned towards the rising sun so you'll find that if you shoot towards the setting sun sinking behind the field then the majority of the stems and flowers are facing towards you.

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Top Tips for Shooting Sunflowers:

• Keep your shutter speed fast enough that you don't capture any movement in the flowers otherwise you'll have blurry shots. How fast you need to shoot will depend on how much wind there is. I recommend trying to keep your shutter speed at 1/50 as a starting point unless it's very calm.
• The longer the focal length you shoot, the harder it will be to keep the entire scene in focus (even at a narrow higher aperture). You can try using focus stacking in calm conditions to get more of the scene in focus OR you can just accept that you will have only some of your image in focus, this effect is also just as artistic.
• In order to shoot a large field showing many sunflower faces, you will need a bit of elevation (or an angle where the flowers are on a natural incline like in the first shot). Choose a vantage point that is elevated or bring a ladder to get some extra height in your shots.
• If you are lucky enough to find a sunflower field on the side of the road to shoot, make sure you and your vehicle are safe from where ever you choose to stand.
• Commercial sunflower fields are often only open during the day which is not usually the best time to shoot, so in order to get the best lighting conditions, you may need to see if they will allow after hours access (which they will often do for a fee).

Happy Sunflower Shooting! 🌻🌻