A Photographer’s Picture of My Sunflower Farm Went Viral. Then a Corporation Stole It, and We Took Them to Court Together

My name is Anders Nilsen. I’m 46, and I grow sunflowers on two thousand acres outside Jamestown, North Dakota.

Most people don’t know that North Dakota grows more sunflowers than any other state. In August, my fields are an ocean of gold stretching to every horizon. Millions of yellow faces turning toward the sun.

It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve been looking at it every summer for forty-six years.

I’m divorced. Six years now. My ex-wife moved to Minneapolis. She said North Dakota winters were trying to kill her, which was fair.

I live alone in the farmhouse with an old yellow lab named Bjorn. I talk to the dog more than I talk to people.

Two summers ago, on an August evening, I was driving my pickup back from the far field when I saw a car pulled over on the shoulder of my road.

A woman was standing in the ditch with a camera, shooting into the sunset over the sunflowers.

I stopped the truck.

“You okay?” I called.

She turned around. Dark curly hair blowing in the wind, a denim jacket, a smile that hit me like a hailstorm.

“Is this your field?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Can you stand in it?” she said. “Right there. Just for one picture. The light’s perfect and it needs a person.”

I’m not a man who stands in pictures.

I stood in the picture.