Findingviews

Posts Tagged ‘nature’

Over the last few years there has been a trend towards the sale of orchids as house plants. It struck me that the beauty of the orchid is a classic photography target, that has now entered a great many homes. No need for hot houses, or treks to out of the way areas to see the fragile beauty of British orchids. They are here in our living rooms.

Time to take some photographs.

I too have orchids in the home. However photos in the home can often have rotten backgrounds. What looks good to use when we set up house rarely looks good in the background of a photograph. To get around this I set up a white reflector and some really bright pink lilies behind the orchids. This way I could fill up my viewfinder with colour or reflected light. No naff background – just something I could work with to create the right picture.  If you don’t have a reflector don’t worry any bright or white cloth as a background will create an interesting effect. Try to get a colour that matches or contrasts well to your orchids. This will give the picture better balance.

Now that I had a set-up it was time to take photographs. I set up the camera for a close up, then varied low F numbers and a variety of flash angles and strengths. The important point here is that after each photograph I reviewed the picture and used to create a setting for the next. If I found it blurred I tried to steady things out with a gorillapod. I also could not help but noticing that I was getting good results by moving the camera position considerably. So a tip for taking this kind of photograph is to use a small tripod so that it can steady you when necessary but not restrict mobility so that those good angles can emerge.  On saying that my 3 favourite pictures were taken at a similar angle. That though is the difference between the fun of the shoot and reflection on the finished article.

Here are 3 of the finished photographs.  I hope you enjoy them and remember that some sterling photographic subjects can be found around the home.

On a day that was warmer than expected yet still cool – we had yet to really reach Spring. I was in Basildon Park near Reading. An interesting house used in films that is surrounded by extensive park lands. I wasn’t walking the parks, but did see the house and paid some attention one tree opposite the entrance. It was a tree that was frozen between seasons

There the mummified remains of leaves and old nut cases left over from Autumn and the kind of barrenness of branch that comes only with mid winter intermingled. Yet there was some evidence of new growth as well. It was a tree full of textures that were taking full advantage of silver light. The sun was breaking through thin clouds – giving us a strange bright and pleasant light.

The stage was set for a series of photographs that explored the branches leaves and textures of the tree. I discovered that it was the textures and colours that were created on this day that I was most attracted. That’s how the picture got its name. It was photographing seasonal remnants on a day that itself was quite Winter or Spring. Its the shapes and textures that make it for me in this image.

I’ve recently produced an abstract pattern and thought it might be interesting to run through the flow of events and processes that led to this particular piece being created.

It all started in on a Sunday afternoon on the Monmouthshire and Brecon canal when I spotted some catkins above my head. The weather was beautiful that day – with a clear blue sky, I took a

photograph using my mobile phone – sadly I didn’t have a good camera available (the battery was in need of a charge). However the final picture I felt was full of potential. So I took a little time to study it. That photograph is on the right. A favourite theme of mine is how the outstretched branches of trees can really look like the system blood vessels and veins in an animal.

Those thoughts got me thinking in sort of laterally fractally kind of way.

If trees can be like veins, and veins when abstracted can look like neurons and these patterns can sort of look like a map.

So plants can be like animals, can be like vascular systems can be like guides to the things we make.

How to show that in an image?

The Connects Pattern

My first step was to put the focus on the shape. That meant getting rid of the sky and simplifyingthings, taking everything right down to its minimum in Photoshop. That looked interesting but wasn’t enough of an image to capture the feeling I wanted. It was a start. I look the pattern I’d created and took a section from it and twisted its orientation onto a new layer in Photoshop. That looked better but was not complete. It was time for a bit of experimentation. Now I was painting with the the shapes in the photograph and I felt an abstract pattern starting to come together. The next step was to take a look at the colours. Taking my map thoughts as an inspiration; I took memories of the colours in the London underground map and started to apply these to the pattern. Things were going the way that  I wanted. It looked bit flat so I rendered in little bits of  lighting on odd parts of the picture.

The final result looked like a map that was bit off its head, a bit like prints of branches, a bit like paint splatter and a bit like something organic and living with odd bits of colour and detail that sort of stand out and make you raise an eyebrow. To me that says complex pattern and I think on reflection I’ve achieved that as I keep finding new shapes hiding in it.

I’ve also marked it up as a T shirt. There’s something slightly retro about this pattern as a T Shirt.