Buckeye, Arizona Sunflower Shoot

Where can you see sunflowers in Arizona this fall?

One location is Sweet Flower Home in Buckeye, Arizona. Farm owner Carrie Mayfield plants acres and acres of a variety of sunflowers and then rents out her sunflower fields to local portrait photographers. Permits are $125 a day. So a lot of Arizona photographers will be out there all during the month of October (well, actually from Saturday, September 28th to Halloween on October 31st.)

I currently have plans to be there on Saturday, October 5th, 2024 and will probably purchase permits for some other dates also, probably Saturday, October 26th.

CLICK HERE FOR INFO ABOUT UPCOMING SUNFLOWER AND FALL PHOTO SHOOTS!

Sweet Flower Home Sunflower Photographer

This is my friend Georgia and her Baby C. They were the first people I ever photographed at Sweet Flower Home, back in the fall of 2022. Wild to think Baby C is now around two years old. She was absolutely brand new here and I feel like this photo above represents new motherhood/parenthood with an artsy take. It’s a hypnotic, slumberous blurry time of life taking care of your brand new little human. I feel like when you look back at that time in your life, it’s all kind of a blur. Which is one reason to get photos like this, to remember how it was and to remember how tiny they were.

The owner of the sunflower fields does staggered planting of sunflower seeds, so that there will be rows of beautiful flowers all month long. Sunflower blooms don’t last all that long, they start to fade after a week or two, so it’s so extremely helpful for photographers to know that at this location they are way more likely to be able to have lovely blooms in their photos. If you are a photographer and want to photograph here, contact Carrie at Sweet Flower Home.

If you would like me to photograph you/your family amongst sunflowers CLICK HERE to find out more and book with Brenda Eden Photography.

CLICK HERE FOR INFO ABOUT UPCOMING SUNFLOWER AND FALL PHOTO SHOOTS!

Arizona Wildflowers

UPDATE: HERE IS THE INFO ABOUT WILDFLOWER SESSIONS COMING UP!

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN TO READ ABOUT THE TWO LOCATIONS.

PLEASE FILL OUT THE FORM TO SIGN UP FOR A WILDFLOWER PHOTO SESSION:

ZANJERO LOCATION - This is a water retention area in Gilbert, Arizona. It’s one of the only places I can find within the metro area that has wildflowers. It is a gooooood place for photos. Some of the things that are good about it: EASY parking, close to the freeway so it’s easy to get to, has a LOT of variety for backgrounds, there are almost no people there so you don’t have to worry about people being in the backgrounds of your photos. Right now it has a TON of wildflowers!!!! Soooooo many more than last year.

The bad things about this place: some of the plants are thorny/sticky and you can get goat burrs in your shoes, so you should definitely not wear open toed shoes.

VISTA DEL ORO AND THE BEELINE HWY: Here is the pindrop for this location. Don’t be alarmed by dry and unpretty this place looks on Google streetview. Right now it is green and GORGEOUS and there are SO many different kinds of wildflowers!

https://goo.gl/maps/zbEr8sHzCKdA5jJk9

Victoria and her daughter met up with me one early evening last April in 2022 for photos in the wildflowers. I absolutely loved how these turned out, though in the almost year since then I have learned more photo editing techniques and I have bought more editing tools for Photoshop, so I kind of want to go back over these and edit them again. We had this field of flowers all to our selves and it was so cute to watch how Vicki’s daughter picked the purple and yellow wildflowers and gave them to her mom.

With all the rain we have had in the last couple months this past winter, I really am so excited about our prospects for amazing wildflowers and even super blooms in Arizona. I’ve gone out searching and found flowers around South Mountain, Usery, and next up I will be exploring Picacho Peak.

I will be announcing Wildflower photo sessions and mini sessions as soon as I figure out when and where to go! If you would like to hear more about those, please subscribe to my newsletter in the form below the photos! They are perfect for engagement photos, maternity, mommy and me, and family photos.

Carly at the Valley of the Sunflowers

This is Carly and her daughter at the Valley of the Sunflowers in downtown Phoenix. I organized a picnic at the VOS and told folks that they could stop by and get sunflower photos before the picnic, if they wanted.

This was back in the spring of 2012 and I was taking a break from wedding and portrait photography, but I was still doing personal photography projects and charity event photography.

I had recently downloaded the program Exposure Software. Exposure describes itself as “the image editor designed for the art of photography.” It gives you the ability to make your digital images look like film. At the time, I was really enchanted with the creamy pink way some film looks. I played around with the Portra filter and some other filters to give my images a creamy pink look. I was very influenced by the work of Elizabeth Messina Photography, who uses film and medium format cameras.

So you will see that in the way I edited these images (especially that last image.)

I gave these images to Carly and she gave me a gift certificate to her restaurant, Carly’s Bistro in Roosevelt Row in downtown Phoenix. I took a friend there and ordered tasty food and absinthe for my drink and found out that absinthe makes me feel sick, but it was fun to see what the folks in Paris liked to drink in cafes in the 1860s. I had been to Carly’s a few times before and I knew that I loved the place, so to be able to take a friend and get whatever I wanted to eat and drink was super fun.

I’m doing portrait sessions amongst sunflowers at the Rocker 7 Farm Patch in Buckeye this month. I will be editing them with my bright and vibrant style - not with this film style. If you would like photos of yourself amongst sunflowers, click on this link for more information.