Photography & Blog
So that’s the first year of my degree completed, it’s been an amazing and positive time; stressful at times but hey I have not been in education since the 1980’s so to be expected. Seeing as there is no project deadlines I thought I may as well indulge in some lighthearted stress free photography over the summer. Yesterday I went to RHS Wisley in Woking, Surrey and spent 4 hours getting up close with the blooms, it’s an amazing place and so vibrant and full of colour.
In this project it was important to move away from the traditional flower cliche. Still using the flowers, water, vase scenario I decided to blend the flowers in a nutri-bullet with some water, the ‘vase’ being a tea-cup, the results of which were ‘pretty’ but took it a step further and went for a more scientific aesthetic and used test tubes as the ‘vase’.
I printed these on acetate which enhanced the colour and was pertinent to the whole scientific aesthetic..
Playing about on Photoshop I created a flower out of the test tubes then continued to develop some further images.
To end; not moving entirely away from the cliche I decided to use the remainder of the flowers in a more traditional way. Well sort of, took them to a small waterfall and held each one in place with some debris caught in the down flow and used a slow shutter speed to capture the water flow. Printing these on Hahne Muller Fine Art Paper and being a little bit creative I soaked some paper in the remainder of the flower liquid, interleaving them with thin architect paper and the prints and had them wire bound into a book.
Voila, this was my studio and location flower project for the 2nd Semester Year 1.
Fiona Macphee 