A bouquet of flowers inspires a half-day photographic exploration of the beauty and subtlety of petals.
Modest close-up of a bouquet of Dahlias. Click on the photo to go to its location in the Corporate Section of Iris Arts. Photo: © Donald J. Rommes
Nancy brought home a bouquet of flowers the other day for herself and for the house. Indoors, the butterscotch-hued Dahlias seemed pretty uniform in color—lacking the variation I thought might add interest in a photo.
I took the bouquet outdoors and things changed. It was a cloudless, sunny day, with an intensely blue sky. Sitting cross-legged on the shaded portion of the patio, I placed the flowers and their vase in front of me. Illuminated by skylight, the flower's color shifted towards the blue and the variations increased. I went to get my camera and tripod..
Viewing through a close-up (macro) lens, I studied the flowers for a composition. Once I saw a something worth pursuing, I put the camera on the tripod, spayed its legs fully to get close to the ground, and moved towards the promising composition. I started with the composition in the first photo.
It's pretty representational (you can still tell its a bouquet of dahlias) but the forms and lovely pastels of individual petals suggest other, even closer, compositions.
Blue sky backlighting the petals alters the colors and creates an interior glow to the flower. Click on the photo to go to its location in the Corporate Section of Iris Arts. Photo: © Donald J. Rommes
Moving the tripod closer to the flower, the focus was limited to individual petals, or portions of petals. The photograph was now less of the flower itself and more about its form and color. I strove for a harmonious arrangement of forms and was surprised by the intensity of the lime green color of the flower's hidden interior.
The purple, green, and blue colors in the out-of-focus left upper corner are the blue sky and distant garden peeking through the petals. I chose to keep those colors and not try to eliminate them by moving the camera. I rather like the effect.
A horizontal composition from approximately the same position as the preceding photo. More abstracted, still a flower. Click on the photo to go to its location in the Corporate Section of Iris Arts. Photo: © Donald J. Rommes
Closer still, much more abstracted, more uncertainty in interpretation for the viewer. Likely a flower, but possibly a blurry image of hot air balloons? Click on the photo to go to its location in the Corporate Section of Iris Arts. Photo: © Donald J. Rommes
The closer the lens was to the petals, the shallower the depth of field and the more restricted the field of view. The effect was one of increasing abstraction. It became more challenging for the viewer to tell what they were looking at.
Of course, that's often the goal in Art— to show a different way of seeing something familiar, to reveal the unseen or ignored. The delight that comes with the unraveling of the puzzle, or the discovery of something new, is for the health. As you know by now, the ill or severely stressed among us simply don't have the same capacity or energy for delight and surprise.
For those reasons, we placed these pastel flower abstractions in the Corporate Art section of Iris Arts.
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