Flowers, I think, make for beautiful subject matter in photography. But flower photography is incredibly saturated – there are trillions of amazing photos out there, a lot of them are photographed so well, too. But I still wanted a piece of it. I wanted to make it one of my main subjects in stock photography. Because for me, it’s an “easy” subject to photograph, being bound at home pretty much most of the time right now, what with little kids whose naps don’t overlap except for maybe one hour every day. Flower photography is something I can do.
But being a creative photographer, I wanted to do something different and started using flowers as a subject for experimental and abstract photography. I’ve got a gallery of the stuff up on Stocksy already, but am not bored yet with trying out different techniques and different filters. The effects continue to inspire and surprise me, and I keep finding different ways to go about it.
My favorite filter is one that my grandfather had boxed up along with his old darkroom stuff (the 3 echinacea photos were taken using that filter). My grandpa (1925-2014) was a hobbyist photographer – he documented his time in the army during WW2 as well – and one of his favorite things to do was experiment. He’d typically have my grandma model for him as he practiced trick photography, multiplications, illusions and double exposures. I think that part of his photography is in my blood too, and so when I found one of his old multiplication (or as I call it kaleidoscopic) filters, I tried it out and was pleasantly surprised by it.
It’s a staple in my camera bag now. In a way, my grandpa is still with me that way, and I get to share photography with him. It’s important to me that I have that connection with him, even though he’s no longer here.
I’m limiting this experimental photography to flowers and plants for now, but hope to find ways to literally zoom out and expand to landscapes and/or portraiture as well. I’ll just have to figure out how to make that work, from a practical point of view.
