Windy Weeds

Tuesday's weather was very windy. With having a light day, I was able to focus on a weather photo for wild art. I drove around town trying to find something. You can imagine this gets pretty tedious after doing it for 5 years. You get to see the same things. I saw a photo in a magazine that showed a bush taken with a slow shutter speed to show movement. I decided that I would try to get that same effect to show the windy day. 

I spotted a field north of town that hand a lot of mustard weeds growing. They were bright yellow, and though not a flower, still pretty. I made my aperture as small as it would go at f/22. I was taking a lot of shots, but because it was so bright outside, I couldn't get my shutter speed slow enough to get the motion effect I wanted. I remembered I had a pair of Dollar Tree sunglasses (worth $1) that I could use to block some of the light. I used the sunglasses as a filter to get a slower shutter speed.

This worked and I decided to find my shot. There was a newly built model home that when angled right I could place it atop a field of these mustard weeds. The weeds were moving all around in the wind and the shot created a feeling of a sea of plants.

The wind whips around mustard weeds atop a hill near a home along DeGarmo Dr. near Bamboo Orchard on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 in Chico, Calif.

(Jason Halley/Chico Enterprise-Record)

I enjoy the times I can take time to be creative. The sunglasses took away a little bit of the sharpness and color accuracy, but I couldn't have slowed down the shutter without it. Who would have thought $1 pair of sunglasses would be such an important part of my photography gear.