The Regier Farm, Hillsboro: Field Notes

A working farm, on ground that was changed by the people who settled it.

The wheat around this farm is here because of who settled it, and the history is worth knowing because it explains the landscape.

In the 1870s Mennonite families emigrated from the Russian Empire to central Kansas, and they brought seed with them: Turkey Red, a hard winter wheat adapted to cold dry continental steppe. That variety thrived here where earlier spring wheats had struggled, and within a generation it had made Kansas the wheat state. The surnames in this part of the county — Regier, Haury, Unruh, Schmidt — are the surnames of that migration.

So the landscape is agricultural rather than natural, and it is specifically wheat. That matters photographically because a wheat field has a calendar unlike anything else in this library, and a wedding date lands somewhere on it.

Hard winter wheat is drilled in September or October, germinates, and goes dormant as a low green mat through the winter. It resumes growth in March, joints and heads out through May, turns from green through gold in June, and is cut in late June or early July. After harvest the ground is stubble until autumn planting.

That produces four distinct landscapes across a year on the same field: bare or green-stubbled autumn, low green winter, intense green spring, and gold standing wheat in June. And a photographer who does not know which one they will get has not asked.

The problems here are the problems of open farmland and there are four of them. There is almost no shade. There is a great deal of wind. The land is flat to gently rolling, which makes the horizon low and the sky enormous. And a working farm contains working things, which are either an asset or clutter depending on how they are handled.

Hillsboro sits at about thirty-eight and a quarter degrees north at roughly fourteen hundred and fifty feet in Marion County. The June noon sun reaches around seventy-five degrees, the December noon sun about twenty-eight and a half, days run from about nine hours forty to fourteen hours forty-five, and civil twilight is roughly twenty-nine minutes.

What follows is four problems and what solves each. We have not photographed a wedding here; which buildings and fields are available, what the crop rotation means for your date and the permitted hours are questions for the family — and the crop question is the interesting one.

The Regier Farm at a glance

Where	A working farm in wheat country near Hillsboro, Marion County, Kansas
The history	Mennonites from the Russian Empire brought Turkey Red winter wheat in the 1870s
The calendar	Green in spring, gold in June, cut by early July, stubble until autumn
The problems	Almost no shade, constant wind, an enormous sky, and working clutter
Ask first	What will be in the fields on your date, and which buildings are available

Problem one: the crop, which is also the opportunity

Ask what will be growing. That single question changes more about the photographs than any technical decision, and the answer is knowable a year ahead because crop rotation is planned.

Standing gold wheat in June is the frame this landscape is famous for and it is genuinely worth planning a date around. A mature wheat field is waist to chest high, uniform, and it takes low light better than almost any surface — the heads are translucent and a low sun behind them lights the whole field from within, turning gold to something closer to molten.

Backlighting is therefore the technique. With the sun low and behind the field, individual heads glow and the seed awns catch as bright filaments, which gives a texture that front lighting flattens entirely. Front-lit wheat is a beige field; backlit wheat is the picture.

A couple standing in mature wheat is also enclosed to waist height, which solves the compositional emptiness that open country otherwise creates. From a low camera with heads at the lens and the couple beyond, the frame has foreground, middle and distance rather than flat bands.

The timing is narrow and it is worth being precise. Wheat turns from green to gold over perhaps two weeks in late May and June, and it is cut as soon as it is dry enough — which can be any time from mid-June to early July depending on the season. A date set for gold wheat is a gamble of a week or two either way, and a wet spring or an early harvest moves it.

After harvest the same field is stubble: a low uniform straw-coloured surface with cut stalks, which photographs as texture rather than as landscape. That is a perfectly usable background and a very different one, and it is what a July or August wedding will have.

Spring gives intense green, which is the least interesting of the four states because green wheat is a flat even field with no texture at low sun. March and April frames are better made against the buildings than the fields.

And autumn gives either bare tilled ground — dark, furrowed, strongly textured, and genuinely good in raking light — or newly drilled wheat showing as fine green rows on dark soil, which is a graphic pattern worth using from a low camera.

One practical note about walking in a crop. A standing wheat field is a farmer’s income, and walking into it flattens what cannot stand back up. The frames that involve being in the crop need permission and a route — usually along a drill line or a field edge rather than through the middle — and asking is both courteous and necessary.

Problems two and three: no shade, and too much sky

The second problem is shade and on open farmland it is acute.

At seventy-five degrees of sun elevation in midsummer, with fields in every direction, an uncovered face at midday has shadowed eye sockets, a bright forehead and a hard line under the nose. Kansas humidity helps — water vapour scatters light and fills shadows, so contrast runs perhaps a stop and a half lower than a dry climate at the same angle — but it does not solve it.

The shade on a farm is where the farm put it, and there are three reliable places. The buildings: a barn doorway, a machine shed, the shaded side of a grain bin, any deep eave. A shed opening is optically a large soft source with a hard mask, and depth back from it controls the ratio exactly as a porch does.

The shelterbelt: prairie farms were routinely planted with windbreak rows — often cedar, hackberry, elm, or Osage orange — on the north and west sides of a homestead, and those are usually the only substantial trees for a considerable distance. A shelterbelt gives a dense dark background and genuine shade at its base, and finding it on arrival is five minutes well spent.

And the watercourse, if there is one. Creeks in this country carry gallery forest — cottonwood above all, the Kansas state tree, broad-crowned with leaves that rustle audibly — and a creek bottom is the deepest shade available.

Failing those, carry a diffuser and have someone hold it, which on open ground is frequently the only option.

The third problem is the sky, which on flat land with a low horizon is half of every wide frame. That cuts both ways sharply.

A cloudless afternoon gives an even blue field above an even crop field, and the wide frames are dull however well composed. But Kansas produces sky structure that few places match — and on a flat horizon you see all of it rather than a fragment.

From April into June the Great Plains generate supercell thunderstorms, and the cloud forms are spectacular: shelf clouds advancing as a wall, mammatus hanging beneath an anvil, towering convection rising to enormous heights. A wheat field under storm structure is among the strongest images in this library.

The safety line has to be plain. This is tornado country, an open field has no shelter, and a supercell is dangerous rather than merely inconvenient. A wedding here in storm season needs a genuine shelter plan and someone watching radar, and no photograph justifies staying out.

Outside storm season the sky still performs. Dust and agricultural haze in Plains air scatter long wavelengths efficiently, which makes a clear sunset here unusually saturated — and with an unbroken horizon the colour spreads across the whole western sky rather than being confined between trees.

Civil twilight runs about twenty-nine minutes and the fall-off is fairly quick, so two or three planned setups fit and improvisation does not.

The wind is the constant that governs equipment. Kansas is among the windiest states, with average speeds well into double figures and very little on open farmland to interrupt them. Never put a modifier on an unweighted stand; hand-held with a braced assistant is the only reliable method; and a five-hundredth of a second is the default for anything with hair or fabric in it.

Wind in wheat is also the best thing about it. A mature field moves as travelling waves, and at a thirtieth of a second on a tripod that blurs into flowing bands while a still subject stays sharp — which is the frame this landscape makes better than any other, and which needs a briefed couple and several attempts.

• Ask what will be in the fields — the answer is knowable a year ahead
• Backlight wheat: heads are translucent and glow, where front light flattens them
• Shade is the buildings, the shelterbelt and the creek. Or you carry it
• Blur the wheat at a thirtieth with a still subject — the frame this place makes best
• In storm season: a shelter plan and someone watching radar

Problem four: working clutter, and the year

The fourth problem is that a working farm is full of working things, and the difference between an asset and a mess is whether they were chosen.

The assets are real. Grain bins are large, cylindrical, corrugated and metallic, and in low sun the corrugations catch as vertical bands of light — which makes a bin a genuinely good background and an unmistakably agricultural one. A row of them reads as industrial rhythm.

Machinery is the other one. A combine, a tractor, a drill — these are large mechanical objects with real character, and raking a light across them at a shallow angle picks out their structure where flat light renders them as coloured lumps. A couple beside a combine, small, gives scale and says working farm in a way no barn door does.

Timber barns and sheds give texture: weathered board, exposed framing, rusted corrugated iron. All of that photographs well at close range and all of it needs raking light rather than frontal.

The clutter is everything else — pallets, drums, tyres, hose, feed sacks, a parked pickup in the wrong place. None of it is a problem and all of it needs deciding about, and the cheapest improvement to almost any frame on a farm is thirty seconds spent moving one object out of it, or two steps sideways.

The rule that works is: choose the agricultural elements deliberately and remove the domestic ones. A grain bin is a subject; a wheelie bin is not.

Ground conditions are the practical matter that most often surprises people. A working farmyard is dirt, gravel or concrete, and after rain it is genuinely muddy rather than merely damp. Central Kansas soils are heavy, and a wet farmyard in a long dress is a real consideration rather than a fussy one — worth raising in advance so nobody is surprised.

As to the year, the wheat calendar and the prairie calendar together give a clear ranking.

Mid-June is the best fortnight if the wheat is standing, and that is the single strongest reason to choose this venue. Gold wheat, long days, a fourteen-and-three-quarter-hour daylight span, and backlit fields at either end of the day. The risk is that harvest comes early and the field is cut.

Late September into October is the best reliable window. Storm season has passed, the heat has broken, the air is at its clearest of the year, and the native prairie grasses on any unploughed ground turn copper and bronze and hold that colour for months. Newly drilled wheat shows as green rows on dark soil, which is a good graphic frame.

May and early June give intense green and the real risk of severe weather. Midsummer after harvest is hot, humid, stubbled and difficult at midday. And winter gives a nine-hour day, real wind, dormant green wheat as a low mat, and standing copper prairie grass — with genuinely good low light across flat open ground and nothing to obstruct it.

One local condition worth knowing: the Flint Hills to the east are maintained by burning in March and April, and on burn days smoke haze can drift across this part of the state, flattening distance and turning the sun orange. It is not on any forecast and it is worth asking a local about if the date falls then.

More frames from The Regier Farm

The Regier Farm wedding photography: common questions

What should I ask first?

What will be growing in the fields on the date. Crop rotation is planned a year ahead, and it changes the photographs more than any technical decision.

When is the wheat gold?

Late May through June, cut any time from mid-June to early July depending on the season. A date set for gold wheat is a gamble of a week or two.

How do I photograph wheat?

Backlit. The heads are translucent and glow from within with a low sun behind them; front-lit wheat is a flat beige field.

Where is the shade on a farm?

The buildings, the shelterbelt planted on the north and west of the homestead, and the creek bottom if there is one. Otherwise you carry it.

What is the best wind frame?

A thirtieth of a second on a tripod, with the wheat blurring into flowing bands and the couple standing still.

How do I handle the farmyard clutter?

Choose the agricultural elements and remove the domestic ones. A grain bin is a subject; a wheelie bin is not.

More Kansas venue guides

We are writing a photographer’s guide to every venue we would happily shoot in Kansas. Here are three more, plus the full index:

• The Sand Creek Station, Goddard: The One Decision That Governs Everything
• The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve: The Problem, and Four Ways Out of It
• The Ambassador Hotel, Wichita: Four Ways Out of the Ornate-Ceiling Problem

All Kansas →

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