Life With An Iris
A story of my life with an iris.
Edge of Night/Intimate Abstractions
An abstract photograph of an iris.
Let me tell you about my experience with one of the most frustrating flowers I ever photographed and why, in the end, these are now some of my favorite images.
The iris was one of the flowers I always found to be the hardest to capture an abstraction of was an iris. I swear, I was mesmerized by the iris because I kept buying them over and over, thinking this time I will get it, I know that this will be the time. And each and every time I bought them I was disappointed again and again. It felt the flower just wasn’t ready to share its secrets with me. I found it so frustrating but still, for some reason, I continued picking them up now and then.
Finally, near the end of my time at graduate school, I picked up yet another bunch of beautiful purple irises. Honestly, after buying the same type of flower for around two years and it not working I am not sure why I kept buying them. I guess I saw it as a challenge and I wasn't going to let it beat me! Well, this time I was thrilled with the results that I got from that session! I remember that awesome feeling of accomplishment and how overjoyed I was to have finally captured that image!
These are now some of my favorite images because of how hard I worked to get them. It taught me to keep trying and to not give up when things were hard or not working at all.
I have a confession though, I haven't picked up another iris since then and as I write this I now feel guilty...maybe the iris has even more planned for me to photograph. I guess I need to take a look at them again soon on a flower shopping trip!!
Aurora Borealis
Aurora Borealis/Intimate Abstractions
An abstract photograph of a hydrangea.
Aurora Borealis is one of those images that invokes childhood memories in me. There are only a handful of times that I have seen the aurora borealis, or northern lights, and each time I have fun memories of those experiences.
The first time I saw the northern lights I was about nine years old in Minnesota, visiting my grandma with my family. One night, it had to have been about two or three o’clock in the morning, my sisters woke me up to show me the beautiful blue-green lights dancing across the night sky. My family stood out on the dewy lawn gazing into the fiery night sky.
The next time we saw them in Minnesota we were driving back to our cabin when the sky came alive. Now, this might be more common for people from the northern states, but at the time we lived in California and were just in Minnesota for the summer, so we pulled our car over and stood on the side of the road watching these beautiful colored lights dancing everywhere. When I look at this image I re-imagine all of those experiences and hope that I will be able to share something like this with my kids one summer.
An Introduction to Intimate Abstractions
An introduction to Intimate Abstractions
Fires of Prometheus/Intimate Abstractions
An abstract photograph of a tulip.
Intimate Abstractions is where flower photography all started for me. I started this series when Bryce and I were in graduate school, and Intimate Abstractions was my thesis.
I chose to photograph flowers to express my feelings of separation from nature, photographing flowers was a way to overcome that feeling. When I started photographing flowers, I did so to escape the city and the claustrophobia I felt with buildings towering above me. I would walk through San Francisco, where we went to school, and see the streets lined with potted flowers, parks built in the shadow of skyscrapers, and trees growing in cement containers on the 35th floor of buildings - all this so that people could be in the city and still feel as if they were, in some way, connected to nature. Living in a big city, and being right downtown, I was deeply missing my connection with nature.
Intimate Abstractions is a series of images that explore the inner beauty of flowers. Each photograph reveals provocative and hidden forms, buried deep within the flower. The images show a diverse mixture of color and texture within the forms. Using a shallow depth of field, the eye is led into and around the images. This series invites you to explore flowers up close and in a unique way. These abstractions invoke feelings and images that you can find within our world and beyond. This portrayal of our universe lies within the flower, waiting to be discovered. Through creating these abstract photographs I was expressing my feelings of separation from nature, my isolation in the concrete maze of reality.
Taking the time to closely view the intricate details, such as the twist of the petals and their rich colors drew me into their alluring depths. This everyday object has had a profound impact on my life which gives me peace of mind and relaxes my soul.
