I had driven past this sunflower field numerous times on my way to a hike. Finally I decided to find a place to pull off to photograph them before they were all done for the year. This one sunflower stood out as it was standing straight and looked in peak condition!
Anything!
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
ISO 200
300mm
f/6.3
1/500
Very nice! This is one where a centered composition works. Very nice colors – yellow and green are easy to overdo. And I love the vignette blur!
Thanks, I’m glad you like it! I didn’t know there was a vignette! I just know when you focus on one place everything tends to blur around it! Glad it looks good, even though it wasn’t intentional! 
It’s not so much that the place where you focus is sharper and the rest blurred, but it’s that the plane of focus is sharp and sharpness falls off either in front of it or behind. That’s important to understand for control over you images. Lots of information about it online. Try searching for depth of field.
Oh yes, I understand dof and how the aperture affects how much is blurred out in the fg/bg and how to get bokeh, etc… I just meant I didn’t know it was called vignette. I always thought you had to add vignette in post processing for that dark around the corners old fashioned look! But now I know it means more than just that!
Very nice Vanessa! My only suggestion would be to try to clone out the little bit of yellowness at the bottom of the frame, if that’s possible, just to remove a potential distraction. And, speaking of vignettes, you could also maybe add a little darkening (not too much) around the edges to highlight the central flower even more. (If you have Lightroom, you could use a radial filter.)
This is a nice capture, with great details in the flower and petals. And you have a good eye, finding this one great specimen in this field! Good shot!
P.S. I also love the title!
Thanks Mark! I appreciate your feedback! I don’t have very fancy tools. I’m working from an iPad and have an app called Pixelmator photo, it’s designed for iPad which makes it good for what I have. I’ll have to see if I can do any of these things with it. If I can I’ll repost! BTW, I saw your website, it’s really nice. Thanks for your time!
Vanessa: Really good plane of focus management and impressive center sharpness. The centered comp works for me but the expanse of BG does compete with the flower. I cropped this to 4:5 ratio in portrait orientation and did add a vignette in the corners. Back to you. >=))>
Thanks Bill! I like what you did, because I can still see the other sunflowers, which I want to so that you can tell that this sunflower is in a huge field (and the title still makes sense!) but I like that you did a portrait crop because it adds personality to a flower that I’ve always thought resembled people. Thanks for your inputs, I really am learning so much!
Vanessa, This is a nice capture. I vacillate between your version and Bill’s version. I like both. Agree with Mark on removing the blurry yellow spot at the left bottom in both versions.
Thanks, Ravi! Glad you like it! Thanks for your feedback also on the bright part. I really love how helpful everyone is on this site!
I am attaching another option with post processing filters being used. Used content aware to remove some elements and then used the quick selection tool to isolate the flower and its leaves, selected inverse and darkened and blurred the background, then hit deselect. So many ways to do things with varying results.
