Sunny, Summer, Sunflowers

El Gato

Well, it is summer so, why not some sunny sunflower shots!

Traveling the backroads here in the middle of the continent, I came across several huge fields of sunflowers. I stopped just to gaze across all of those bright yellow flowers and grabbed these two shots.

Hope all are enjoying the waning days of summer (at least here in the northern hemisphere).

Juano

I’m always amazed by the geometric arrangement of the seeds. From a composition perspective, I get what you were trying to do on the first shot, but it doesn’t work for me. The second one is nice, but it needs some breathing room on the top of the frame. Cheers

Cornflake

I'm a sucker for sunflowers. The first one works fine for me.

denisegoldberg

I like the first one too, gorgeous!

Stumblebum

Second one by a mile IMHO.

black mamba

The swing in responses is quite interesting. In this case, I'm with Taz. By a mile.

El Gato

First... Thank you everyone for your comments, they are always appreciated.

Second...yes, Tom, the swing of responses is wonderful to see. This means a lot, at least to me, as it provides both substantiation of the effort that went into setting up the shot as well as an opportunity for improvement for the next shot.

With the first image I was attempting to take in the broader field of flowers but, also preserving and presenting the detail in the petals of the single flower.

Image number 2, evoked a response I was prepared for, "breathing room on top of the frame." Well noted and on point, thanks Cristóbal.

So, why did I chose to toss the Golden Ratio and Golden Spiral aside here and shoot the sunflower as presented, off center, and a tighter "crop"? Well, for a couple of reasons.

I did not want the center of the flower or the entire flower actually, taking up the full frame as a central point of focus. If I opened up the top of the frame to include the entire flower, I would have lost the petals and their associated detail at the bottom of the flower. I wanted to preserve some of the color (green) captured at the bottom of the image against which the bright yellow petals "rest." Lastly, I just thought it look "artistically good" framed as I had it set up.

Many thanks to everyone! Your comments and responses are helping me to be a better photographer and to think, stop, and think again before depressing that shutter release.