Sunless Sunflower

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks.  However, in this case the old dog in question is me, and I sometimes have a bit of a hard head when it comes to getting something right. In this particular instance the trick would be using flash as a fill light.  We have a nice bed of Sunflowers in the back yard, and I wanted to photograph them as the sun was setting.  With the setting sun being behind the flowers, another source of light is obviously necessary, otherwise the flower would be rather dark.  But, I also didn't want to wash out the background light and lose those golden sparkles in the background.  I ended up shooting the photograph at f/16, 1/50sec, ISO 400 at 70mm with a diffuser on the flash head.  I had originally found a setting that made the background look nice, and then played around a little bit after turning on the flash to get the look that I wanted.  The flower looks nice and crisp, and my little golden sparkles can still be seen.  It's still a work in process, but I think I'm headed in the right direction.