Inhuman Portraits
Coherence is something that feels very important to my practice of photography. I want to be shooting often (always more often) but while it's nice for it to be "fun" it releases fewer sparks if there isn't some theme or project that the shooting is contributing to. On the other hand, if my project is complicated or difficult to get the right subjects for, then I'm not taking pictures much at all.
I started taking flora portraits during COVID. It's something that is easily repeatable, simple to access and setup but still engaging, challenging and playful. My perfect balance! "Darkroom" style shots are certainly not my specialty so it's been fun to find an accessible way to explore these types of shots. It's so fun to explore the personality of each bud/blossom, how they respond to light or change mood by position. And let's be honest, they are much more consistent posers than us.
The photos below are some of my faves from the past 18 or so months. I'm going to do a deep dive into a few below because, process is interesting? We'll see... Feel free to skip to the full gallery below.
Rose’s Aging
We had a bunch of roses in various states of decay and it seemed like a good idea to try to capture the movement of the lifecycle.
These are the shots I feel least confident in and struggle with the most. A carefully composed set shot, lighting/backdrop etc required. My patience of thinking through how everything will work and most especially, tinkering once it doesn't, is low. After the amount of time it takes to initially set up I'll get frustrated and doubling or tripling that time to rearrange and get the shot right, settling for good enough.
Here, my idea to equally space out the roses ends up with a weird bunch of the left since equal spacing of a much greater amount of material looks bizarre. The light isn't quite right, nor the focus, but, I still like the idea!
Patience is such a bitch.
Yard Buds
This was taken at our prior house, mid pandemic, before I set up my little flower "studio." It's really what inspired the whole thing. I had made a goal to learn more of the plants (and later animals aka birds) around me. A great thing to do when stuck in your house/yard. So I gathered every flower from our front and back yards and brought them in to inspect.
I love this photo because it feels like spring for me. It's bright and hopeful and energetic. It's not particularly good, the focus isn't great, I couldn't fit all the flowers on the small surface I had to work with, but having all these good friends twinkling in once place was just a delight.
Inhuman Portraits
