Sunflowers

As this new school year started, things were going to be different for all of us. Ahna moved to third grade, Ezra started going to school for the first time, and I found myself with a few hours twice a week with an opportunity to do what I wanted. I thought that the time was going to provide me with ample chance to do anything I wanted….movies, sleep, work out, music, photography, stand in the hallway and not move….you know, anything I wanted.

Well, as things tend to do, those mornings are getting filled up with all of the stuff that I previously drug Ezra along to – it’s just a rearrangement of the previous schedule. Sure, we are more than a month into it, and I have had a chance to run a little, to watch a little mindless TV, and to play on the computer; but mostly it’s been meetings or errands that Ezra doesn’t have to deal with.

Anyhow, all of this ramble is actually going somewhere: there was this one morning recently that I took the opportunity to head out into the great wilderness that is the north side of the Denver metro area and find some sunflowers to photo. I hadn’t scouted any places previously, and my friend that knows the area had to back out at the last minute (something about some big fires in Oklahoma)….so point the car to a good last-known-location, hope to get there before sunrise, and ignore the No Trespassing signs on the fields. Actually, I only ignored a sign like that once, and for about 10 feet before going to a different field with no such obvious signs.

As luck would have it, there was about two minutes of awesome sunrise light before the sun ducked behind clouds for the rest of the morning, creating a very flat light, which is at the same time annoying and a good thing. Annoying because I couldn’t get the shot that I had in my head, and good because it forced me to look at things in a different way to get something worth keeping.

Blah, blah, blah; right?! Enough writing, here are the photos: