I've often seen images coming from the well-known sunflower fields of Denver International Airport (DIA), but had never taken the time to find and shoot them, until this trip. Finally, I got around to seeing what all of the fuss was about.

"Wild" Sunflowers

I met up with a car-full of sunflower seekers at this field of small flowers. They mentioned that these were "as big as they get in Colorado" and that "there were no other sunflowers."

Early on in my search for the sunflower fields, I hit a lot of dead ends, literally. I was also tempted to stop and take pictures of many other things during my search. Honestly, this was nice as often times, when searching out a composition, there aren't many other things tugging at you for your attention.

I met up with a car-full of sunflower seekers at this field of small flowers. They hopped out of their car and beamed over to the field and started snapping images. They mentioned to me, when I asked if they had found the sunflower fields, that these flowers were the fields and that these flowers were "as big as they get in Colorado" and that "there were no other sunflowers."

"Interesting," I thought to myself as I thought back to the images I had seen online of actual sunflower fields in Colorado. Realizing I had bumped into a group of "know-it-alls," I walked on down the edge of the field, set-up my trusty tripod, took a few shots and was on my way to continue my search. The know-it-alls, meanwhile, seemed to be headed home, or at-least, in a direction that was not where I eventually found the sunflower fields. Darn.

Continuing down the road, I eventually bumped into a spot where there were multiple cars pulled over. You guessed it; I found a field of actual sunflowers.

Behind The Scenes on the edge of the sunflower field. #BTS

To be honest with you, I was initially very turned off by the large number of people who had stopped to photograph the sunflowers or to photography individuals in the sunflowers. It seemed that everywhere I looked there were people.

This feeling soon passed as I looked around and found that the people there, and seemingly the people before them, had not damaged the field in any way that I could see. I didn't see any trampled flowers, no flowers that had their stalks broken nor did I see any trash. Now, I obviously did not walk the entire field, but I did look hard for such items and was happy to not have found any.

Sunset was soon approaching, so I began looking for a decent composition. I walked the edge of the field in an effort to put the flowers between me and the sunset without getting any signs of humans. This is the composition I ended up with. Now, the only question was, "Was the atmosphere going to cooperate?" It was beginning to look as if the clouds were not going to play my game. In the image above, you can see the clouds building in the lower right portion of the image.

The Clouds and I Have A Love-Hate Relationship

Well, as you can see in the image above, the clouds did move in. There was still an hour, or so, before the sunset that I was looking for and it was clear that I was not going to get it.

Once it was clear that I was not going to get the sunset I had hoped for, I took one last shot, packed up and began the 80+ minute drive home. You have no idea how excited I was to get on I-25S. That was sarcasm by the way....

All-in-all, I enjoyed the shoot. I was, initially, disturbed by the number of photographers/subjects in attendance. It would be a bit hypocritical of me to chastise them when I too was at the field. After-all, they did seem to be being quite respectful, which I was thankful for. I can only hope that their apparent respect for the landowners property continues.

So, get out your tripod, bring along your L-bracket, to make flipping orientations a breeze, and go shoot! I'd love to see what you come up with. Hop over to my sunflower post on Facebook, post one of your sunflower images and my drop me a line! Thanks!

~Jason

- Update -

I went back to the sunflower fields 17 Aug 2019 and managed to catch a few more images. Enjoy!