At Raleigh's Dorothea Dix Park, everything is coming up sunflowers

Just two months ago, I did several posts about a shoot I did at Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh. One thing I was wanting to shoot at the time but couldn't -- because it was out of season -- was the park's renowned sunflower field. The flowers wouldn't be in bloom until July. 

On Wednesday, I returned to the park and took care of that little detail, as this post attests. According to an article I saw last weekend in the Raleigh News & Observer, the sunflowers are expected to remain in bloom through this weekend. 

I was impressed by what I saw, and I made a point to try and get different perspectives and angles of the field itself and the blooms in various arrangements -- singles, doubles, groups, lines, front and back. 

I've emailed the park staff to see if they could tell me the dimensions of the portion of field on which there are sunflowers, and I'll add that to this post if and when I get a response. But until then, I'd say that length is easily a football field long, and the "width" (the shorter dimension, if it isn't exactly square) isn't too far off from 100 yards as well. 

The area of field containing sunflowers -- let's call it the garden -- can be cruised by foot along a series of dirt paths, and visitors are asked to stay on those paths. When I was there, some of the most traveled paths also were topped with matting for protection from an overnight rainfall. (Yes, we finally got a decent rainfall!)

Sunflower plants average about 5-feet 9-inches in height, and at the Dix Park sunflower field, they are in all sizes. I'm 5-9, and I saw quite a few that were taller than me. 

The size of the crowd visiting the display Wednesday was manageable for someone like me trying to get photos. I avoided going last Saturday, when there an celebratory event planned for the field and the sunflowers. I knew it'd be impossible to get decent photos with so many people. 

It was nice to see people enjoying the display. Quite a few paused to get pictures of themselves (selfies, or someone not in their party was asked to do the honors). Many also were taking pictures of the flowers.

Interestingly, adjacent to the sunflower field was the cemetery of the former Dix psychiatric hospital. I also strolled that grounds and took pictures, which I'll present in a subsequent post.

To view a full gallery of images from the sunflower shoot, follow the link in this sentence.  

Above and first nine photos below: These images are designed to give you an idea of the layout of the "garden" and paths through and around it. 

Above and first two photos below: These looked like they might have been pummeled downward by yesterday's hard rainfall. 

Above: The backside of a petal.

This lone sunflower (above) was drooping so low that I decided to stop and photograph it. The shot below is a crop of the flower to bring it into closer view. 

Above: This shot reminded me of the scenes in the motion picture Field of Dreams when old-time ballplaying "ghosts" disappeared into the cornfields after their games. 

Above and last four photos below: Adjacent to the sunflower field was this garden of non-sunflowers booms. I decided to grab a few shots of it, too.