From Soggy Shoes to Sharp Shots

A Quick Turnaround

The morning after pulling back into my driveway from Acadia National Park, I was up again at 4 a.m. — bleary-eyed but buzzing — swapping the fog and coastlines of Maine for waves of yellow petals right here at home. My friend Mel Bates had texted me that the sunflower fields were finally in bloom, and that was all it took. No unpacking, no resting. Just grab the gear and go.

Last summer, I’d missed the sunflowers completely, and I had regretted it since. All this year, I’d been waiting for another chance — specifically, for the moment I’ve been picturing since then: an indigo bunting singing proudly on a sunflower. That was the shot I wanted, the one that had been playing in my head for nearly a year. And now, the flowers were finally in bloom, the buntings were here… and I wasn’t going to waste my second chance.

When the Plan Falls Apart

The plan was simple: get to the sunflower field early, find a good vantage point, and wait for the buntings to show. What I hadn’t planned on was the stream.

To actually reach the field, I had to cross a narrow stretch of water — something I didn’t even know was there until I was staring right at it. No problem, I thought. I’ll just balance on this stick, step lightly, and… well, you can guess how that went.

One slippery misstep later, I was in. Shoes, pants, the whole works — soaked through. Somewhere in the middle of my flailing, I managed to twist my body so that my camera stayed high above my head like some prized relic being rescued from a sinking ship. Priorities.

It was barely past sunrise and I was already dripping wet, standing in a muddy stream. Most people would have turned back right there. But the buntings were calling all around me, and I wasn’t about to waste my early wake‑up — or give up after the one hour drive to get to this location. So, wet or not, I kept going.

All the Wrong Focus

Soaked shoes aside, I made it to the field — and there they were. Indigo buntings darting between the blooms, perching for just a moment before disappearing into the stalks again. It was exactly what I’d been waiting for… except my camera had other ideas.

Every time I lined up a shot, the autofocus decided the sunflower itself was the real star of the show. The petals were tack‑sharp… the bird, not so much. And in the moment, I didn’t notice. I was so focused on timing and composition that I never stopped to zoom in and check.

It wasn’t until I got home and looked closer that my heart sank — image after image of perfectly crisp flowers with just‑soft‑enough birds to make them unusable. They weren’t bad, exactly… just not the shot I’d been chasing for a year.

That stung a little, but I had some time before the field wilted so I resolved to go back as soon as I could. Later that week, much better prepared with a pair of muck boots, a ladder, my daughter in tow, and a plan I went back. The plan was simple: switch to single‑point autofocus and force the camera to lock exactly where I wanted it. No more letting it guess. No more crisp petals and blurry buntings.

The difference was night and day. I'm not saying it was easy, but it was effective and suddenly, the buntings were tack‑sharp, the sunflowers glowed, and I was finally getting the images I’d imagined all year.

Lessons From the Field

Looking back, it’s funny how a shoot I’d been planning for a year still managed to surprise me. Between the unplanned swim in the stream, the autofocus fiasco, and hauling a ladder through a sunflower field, it was far from the smooth, picture‑perfect outing I’d envisioned. But that’s the nature of wildlife photography — you can prepare, but you can’t script it.

In the end, I got the images I wanted. Not because it went according to plan, but because I adapted, learned from my mistakes, and kept showing up. And maybe that’s the real takeaway: always pack your sense of humor, check your focus, and don’t be afraid to go back for round two.

If you enjoyed this story, you can see more of my wildlife and nature photography — from sunflower fields to puffins in the North Atlantic — at Shawn Thomas Photography.