Looking up to a Maximilian sunflower
On September 20th I went back to Blunn Creek Preserve, the scene of yesterday’s earlier photograph of snow-on-the-prairie, and found some Maximilian sunflowers, Helianthus maximiliani, doing their thing. Here’s a flower head of one of them.
If you’re interested in photography as a craft, points 1, 3, and 24 in About My Techniques pertain to this image.
© 2015 Steven Schwartzman
Portraits of Wildflowers 
Stunning photo and great advice. Will now try this angle. Skies are so blue here in Andalucia!
navasolanature
September 28, 2015 at 5:41 AM
¡Viva Andalucía! Ojalá la visite un día.
Good luck with your blue-sky and upward-angle photos.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 8:45 AM
Ojalá tambien!
navasolanature
October 3, 2015 at 7:54 AM
Having had a burst of photographing rudbeckias, helenium and helianthus I shall swiftly pop over to your techniques to discover how I SHOULD have been doing it 😀
https://smallbluegreenflowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/07/flower-portrait-macro-3/
Heyjude
September 28, 2015 at 6:12 AM
Not so much should have as could have. The possibilities are infinite. My list mentions some techniques that have worked for me some of the time. You seem to be doing fine already, Jude.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 8:54 AM
Oh and I forgot to mention how much I like this with the dusting of pollen and those petals that stick up, a bit like a bad hair day 🙂
Heyjude
September 28, 2015 at 6:16 AM
Those “unkempt” ray flowers are what initially got my attention, too, and then there was the bonus of the stray bits of pollen.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 10:51 AM
Steve – yet another of your beautiful photographs. I simply love the intense yellow against the blue blue sky.
anyone4curryandotherthings
September 28, 2015 at 7:04 AM
The camera sensor “sees” things differently from the human eye and mind, but I’d say its vision here is appealing.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 12:46 PM
I like looking up to a Maximilian. Looking up makes us feel positive and happy apparently. I think I would probably prefer to have your Maximilians to look up at on our Art Gallery but this will have to do. http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/72461529/everything-is-going-to-be-alright–isnt-it
Gallivanta
September 28, 2015 at 7:05 AM
The first R in that photograph is so dark that the statement seems to begin with EVE.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 1:25 PM
Well, that makes a nice beginning.
Gallivanta
September 28, 2015 at 10:23 PM
It does.
Steve Schwartzman
September 29, 2015 at 7:31 AM
How beautiful, and the flower speaks through you…
Maria F.
September 28, 2015 at 8:41 AM
That’s a nice way to put it. Thanks.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 1:30 PM
I’m really quite taken with this variation on your yellow-flower-blue-sky theme. The cloud is obvious, but I like the way the less-obvious fog or dissipating clouds have subdued the sky, and perhaps the yellow of the flower. The two rays on the left remind me of a dancer’s gesture. Perhaps Maximilian is disk-o-dancing.
shoreacres
September 28, 2015 at 8:43 AM
In a region with so many DYCs, it seems natural to combine their yellow with the brightness of the sky, mediated here by the softness of the main cloud and its echoes.
If any disk-o dancing is taking place, perhaps it’s kept charged up with Ray-o-Vac batteries.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 1:58 PM
SWEET…..jas L
James Work Photography
September 28, 2015 at 9:58 AM
Glad you find it so.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 1:59 PM
I have these flowering in my garden. They crack me up with their absurd height~usually 7′ or so before they flop over.
melissabluefineart
September 28, 2015 at 11:42 AM
I like not only how tall they can get but also how erect they often are, as opposed to the more-familiar “common” sunflowers that grow in a more scraggly and bushy way. Just this weekend I began to see some tall Maximilian sunflowers.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 2:01 PM
It used to bug me that they flop over just when they were really in flower, but then I realized that is how they assure their seeds land some distance from the parent plant. I now have them growing with cup plant. Are you familiar with it? It is a monster, with buttressed stems I think you could build with they are so strong. Their rigid clumps keep “Max” upright 🙂
melissabluefineart
September 29, 2015 at 11:02 AM
I looked online and at
http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/prairie/plantx/cupplantx.htm
found a cup plant that is Silphium perfoliatum. That species doesn’t grow in central Texas, but we have several other Silphium species here. A lot of people take them for sunflowers, which they’re not, although they’re clearly in the same family.
That’s a good insight about the heads of your Maximilian sunflowers flopping over.
Steve Schwartzman
September 29, 2015 at 1:34 PM
Thank you! I so enjoyed your ‘how to page’. Wonderful information .. Great pic too btw! 😀
Julie@frogpondfarm
September 28, 2015 at 6:48 PM
I’m glad you found the information helpful, Julie, and the picture great.
Steve Schwartzman
September 28, 2015 at 8:51 PM
Beautiful!
Inger
September 28, 2015 at 10:59 PM
And simply so.
Steve Schwartzman
September 29, 2015 at 7:09 AM
As much as I have enjoyed your sky backgrounds, I think I like this even more with the cloud/s. Nice perspective.
Steve Gingold
October 2, 2015 at 1:12 PM
I take advantage of clouds for backgrounds when I can (there’s more variety than with nothing other than shades of blue), but Austin skies aren’t as dramatic as those in some other parts of the country.
Steve Schwartzman
October 2, 2015 at 1:19 PM