This gallery includes flowers of all sorts.  About ten years ago, I discovered the magic of using a telephoto lens at a large focal length and high shutter speed to create closes up of blossoms with a soft background. (This also works for portraits of people and animals.) Some of the images here use that technique.  I've also been intrigued with sunflowers, which, happily surround Davis, where I live.  In the late spring and early summer, the area looks like it has been covered by bright yellow paint. 

 

Heading out just before sunrise to photograph the sunflowers is especially exciting, particularly when "God rays" are streaming over the sunflowers. It's also fun, but not as exciting, to photograph the sunflowers at sunset. In addition to the sunflowers, the images in this gallery were captured in Yolo County, the Mojave Preserve, the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe, Nebraska and Kansas. 

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