PHOTOGRAPHY. NATURE.
Searching for the Bright Shining Poppy Flower Fields
When you’re hunting for a photography session
Flowers are the smiles of nature. And they make me smile. I love seeing the fields change in color over the months. Every season there’s another dominant color shining all around.
“Flowers are the smile of nature and the mirror of our soul.” — Debasish Mridha
Jumping out of planes for a living, I am the lucky one to be able to witness the change of colors from above. Just a few weeks ago, everything was yellow. The rapeseed fields were shining all across northern Germany and I couldn’t get enough of it.
And then they all vanished from one day to another. The yellow was gone. And so was my smile. I didn’t know it yet but soon another color would grab my attention.
Just a few days ago, I started spotting some red. Slowly but surely, it got brighter and more sparkling.
It’s poppy flower season.
I tried to capture the fields from above, but even the closest ones were still too far to be seen on the screen of my GoPro. What I did manage, though, is to locate the closest fields.
On my first free afternoon, I set off with the inline skates looking for those red shining fields.
The first field I got to was right next to the main road. The red was dominant but other colors were to be found in between as well. Blue, white, and green.
Cornflowers in the brightest blue were creating a beautiful contrast to the red of the poppy flowers. In between, tall daisy flowers were adding white dots and the festival of colors was perfect.
I had planned to shoot the fields in the sunset light, but since I had to drive far to get there, I didn’t want to skate back in the dark since I was using country roads where cars would race at 100kph past me.
Despite the sun standing still a little higher on the horizon, I wasn’t disappointed with the result of my images.
Just before I left, I found some purple in the field too. Other wildflowers thrive as well and bloom to share some beauty with the rest.
I kept on switching lenses taking close-up photographs and wide-angle shots of the entire field.
It was a joy to play around with colors, contrasts, and the constellation of them all.
Eventually, I decided to head further in the hope I would find another field. A brighter one, one with more red in it and less blue, green, and white. I don’t know why I thought that would be prettier.
I had an idea where the next field was, but I was starting to get tired. It had been a long day at work and I was a long way from home. I think I spotted the field I saw from the air but decided it was too far to still get to.
Instead, I stopped in front of the little village, capturing the sun peeking through in between the clouds shining on a few poppy flowers growing at the edge of a cornfield.
This was where I reached the bicycle path that would lead me back home. And this was where I got the poppy flowers in the sunset light.
It wasn’t a huge field, not at all. Just a few flowers blooming at the edge of the bike trail. But just enough flowers to make me smile.
They were moving softly in the wind and shining in the sunset light.
I was happy. Smiling all around, taking a few more photographs before I waved goodbye.
It ended up being a long and exhausting drive home but I was happy with what I saw and experienced on this trip.
Nature nurtures me. It makes me smile all day long. And so does photography.
“What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” — John Lubbock
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