Flowers – Musings from the cold

Photos from the week

Posted on October 5, 2025October 5, 2025 by Sharon

Most of my photos this week are of flowers. I’ve been photographing flowers since I was first given a digital camera for Christmas in 2007. Until this very moment, I’ve never stopped to think about why. What drew me to flowers in the first place? What keeps drawing me back?

I tend to photograph single flowers – one type rather than bouquets. Have you noticed that? More often than not, it’s one bloom, or several of the same kind. That’s something I’ve never really thought about either.

So I just set myself a small thinking challenge: why do I love to photograph flowers?

Partly it’s their fragility, and also their complexity, their personality, and their vibrancy, allowing for endless possibilities.

Partly it’s the challenge they offer. How can I be intentional with something so fragile and complex? What am I trying to say when I photograph this flower, this time?

Each photo becomes an experiment in seeing differently. How can I play with light, location, composition, depth of field? What happens if I shift my focus – literally or figuratively?

And flowers are everywhere, especially at this time of year. They don’t need bookings or studios or expensive gear. They don’t require complicated set-ups, though there’s no shortage of creative problem-solving along the way. Do I show the vase, and if so, how much of it? How close/far-away from the lens do I want the flowers to be? Do I want all of the flower lit or will there be shadows – and if so, which bits will be in shadow? Which parts do I want in focus – the middle, the edges of the petals, all of it? Do I want them to bend in a particular way? How will I hold them still/in position?

So many decisions!

Photographing flowers gives me space to develop technically and creatively. It’s a way to find my sense of what feels like me. I love the clean precision of a focus-stacked image where every petal is sharp – well, I do when other people create those sorts of images – but I also love the dreamy, soft-edged, not everything’s in focus look.

I’ve also noticed that the flowers I photograph at home have a different intentionality, process, and style than the flowers I shoot in a garden. At home, I can control light, composition, and background – it’s quieter, more deliberate, almost meditative. In a garden, there’s a sense of discovery and spontaneity: the light changes constantly, a breeze spings up just as I press the shutter button, I’m always tucking other plants/leaves/buds out of the way. The process is more about responding than arranging. They each have their own rhythm, and their own way of reflecting how I see the world.

Anyway, here are some of my flower photos from this week.

Tulips (Forest Glade Garden, Mt Macedon)

Daffodils (Forest Glade)

Getting up close (Forest Glade)

Mini gerberas at home

Flowers, Photography, Writing

The single sock

Posted on September 29, 2025 by Sharon

There’s been a single sock sitting on the chest of drawers for months. I check each load of washing carefully for its partner, but no luck. The sock has stayed single.

Another lone sock joined it for a while, and for a brief moment it looked like they’d make an unlikely pair. I mean, who says socks need to match? But soon enough, that second sock’s partner showed up, leaving the first sock on its own again.

And then yesterday, while putting other socks away, there it was, the missing partner. It had been in the drawer all along. Two single socks became a pair again.

I thought about that sock. How it wasn’t doing any harm, sitting there. How it was never really lost. And how, when I wasn’t actively looking for its partner, it just turned up. Almost like magic.

This week’s word for our photography challenge is flower, so I opened my photo album to see if I had any decent flower photos. Scrolling through, I came across images from years ago I’d forgotten. Photos I’d dismissed because I couldn’t see anything of value in them. This time, looking again, I noticed a similarity running through them – dare I say, a style. It had been there all along apparently.

Like the sock in the drawer, these photos weren’t lost. They just needed me to realise that sometimes what we’re looking for isn’t found by looking, but by recognising.

Images from 2007

Images from gardens

Lillies from 2017

Images from today

Flowers, Photography, Writing

On recognising your style

Posted on September 27, 2025October 6, 2025 by Sharon

When I was first given a camera, sometime around 2007, I had no idea how it worked or what I would photograph. But I did know something about light from my time at university and so I experimented. A halogen lamp. An oven tray wrapped in aluminium foil. Windows with lace curtains. I bought flowers from the local florist – single stems arranged in whatever came to hand (a vase, a jar, a glass) – and set them up in areas of the lounge room. And then I played with the light … and learnt how to use the camera.

One wall of the lounge room was painted green, and it became my backdrop. The flowers stood out against it, classical and beautiful. I started to take the camera further afield – to the botanical gardens in Hobart, City Park in Launceston, the rhododendron gardens in Burnie. I photographed red hot pokers and made them redder, the daffodils that popped up unexpectedly under the rose bush in the backyard, and the insides of camellias.

Over time, I started photographing people – people I passed in the Bourke Street mall, those lingering near the steps of H&M listening to the buskers, those waiting at the lights on King Street, or outside Flinders St station. Sometimes I asked permission, sometimes I simply asked by lifting my camera, but always there was a burst of courage required in the approach. Most said yes. Some said no. I learned not to take refusals personally. And not to ask women of a particular age – they always said no. I loved the small exchanges: the older women who wanted to chat, the stories shared in passing, the faces that lingered in my memory – Jiggy, Brabh, Junior, Lisa, Samyrah, Belle, George. I gathered these portraits into a book, Faces of Melbourne – and printed one copy only. It’s one of my favourites.

My practice developed. I hired studios, booked models, attended workshops. I learned posing mostly from the models themselves, and more about lighting from every shoot – how to use a beauty dish, umbrella, softbox, and how to make the most of window light. As the gear expanded so did my knowledge. I’d moved a long way from the days of the halogen lamp and the oven tray wrapped in foil.

One house we lived in had a white brick wall to use as a backdrop, two storeys high and east-facing. It was a space filled with light, and the tulips, hydrangeas, sunflowers, and poppies looked luminous against it.

Then life got in the way …

Eventually, another move, another house. I had a ‘studio’ in this new house, and I painted the walls a neutral colour to use as a backdrop. I kept out some of the lighting gear, thinking I’d get around to using it. But two years passed with only a handful of photographs, none of which excited me. They were just the same, but worse technically. I set up the lights, but couldn’t create anything new. Photography no longer satisfied me in the way it had and I began to wonder if I had anything left to say.

I thought the issue might have been one of space and explored the idea of building a studio in the backyard. But in a moment of clarity, I realised that I hadn’t learnt to use the light in this new house. Shortly after, at a photography workshop in Ballarat, Kris, the facilitator, spoke about recognising your own style – how good it was when someone recognises one of your images as yours because it has a certain style. That struck me and the two ideas became a spark.

I looked around the house again – so many windows, so much light. Different walls, each with its own character/colour/shadows. I realised that what I’d thought was sameness was actually my style, something I’d been building since 2007.

I felt excited again. I made so many different choices, and remembered what a photography teacher had once told me: photography is problem-solving. Given all the problems I was solving (how to hold the reflector in just the right position, how much to open or close the shutters, what to hold the flower with, how close or far away from the background to put the flower), I felt the truth of it. I also knew that the solutions could be simple: a halogen lamp and an oven tray wrapped in foil, a window and a square of black card, a green wall and shutters to shape the light.

And so each morning I reach for my camera and some flowers, and go in search of the light. I fall into a rhythm – one which absorbs and excites me. I feels my style re-emerging, and with it, the outline of a new self.

The white wall as backdrop

Street portraits

Working with models

Finding the light – September 2025

Photography

Macro Project #1: Magnifying Glass

Posted on May 6, 2023 by Sharon

Some time ago, I gifted Tim the book 52 Assignments: Street Photography and he’s been sharing his work on his blog if you want to check it out. His latest entry is about layers, although not of the kind we need at the moment, given the cold air crossing the southern part of Australia.

Just last week, Tim gifted me the book 52 Assignments: Macro Photography. I like the idea of regularly working on a project as it gives me a different purpose for taking photos, provides me with a challenge, and extends my skills.

The first project is ‘Magnified’. David Taylor, the author, writes that “there are a variety of inexpensive ways to try out macro photography … the simplest method is to hold a magnifying glass in front of a non-macro lens. The results are usually far from perfect”, he assures me, as “the images are rarely pin-sharp, and often suffer from chromatic aberrations and distortions”.

This morning I headed up to the local office supply shop and found a magnifying glass – two actually. A proper one and a big chunky green one designed for kids. I had seen a flower through the kitchen window this morning and thought it would make a good subject.

I played around and took lots of really terrible shots – I was almost convinced it is not “the simplest method” – but the longer I experimented, the more comfortable I became with the camera in one hand, and the magnifying glass in the other. I tried a variety of lenses, as suggested, and found, to my complete surprise, that the 28mm lens worked best. For one thing, my arm was long enough – the lens was able to focus more closely to the subject than some other lenses I tried. The 85mm was a complete shambles, but still, it was good learning.

Here are five of the shots I think are worth sharing.

If you have a camera and a magnifying glass, give it a shot! It’s a fun project and a good one for staying warm as we head into winter.

Flowers, Photography

Celebration …

Posted on March 27, 2019November 24, 2019 by Sharon

I finished my radio therapy treatment on Thursday last week. The final four treatments were ‘booster’ treatments, which I found quite terrifying. No goggles, no holding my breath, just a really big machine zapping a very targeted part of me at close quarters. I almost asked for the goggles back, then realised I could just shut my eyes to avoid being confronted by the bigness, closeness and scariness of the machine.

Each treatment was over quickly though and Emma would drive me home while I felt a little more shell shocked each time. I have no idea what I would’ve done without her.

It was fabulous to have Emma stay with us (Photo by Tim)

I’d somehow forgotten about, or perhaps thought I was immune to, the side-effects though. Apart, of course, from fatigue.

I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Karen, my radio oncologist, told me about the potential for them, as did the breast care nurses, and others I’ve spoken with who have gone through similar treatment. I even wrote about them on this very blog a few weeks ago, yet I was still caught off-guard.

A sunburn type response.

Redness.

Swelling.

Peeling.

Pain.

I wrote in that earlier post: ‘I might get all of these, some of them, or none.’

I got the jackpot – all of them.

The good news is that they probably won’t last more than a week or two (or maybe three or four).

And the other good news is that I’ve had company since halfway through my treatment – others to share my daily annoyances with. Probably not good news for them, but I’ve appreciated having Emma (who stayed an extra week with me) and now Deb to whinge to.

I also had the foresight to take some sick leave and I’m very pleased I did. I couldn’t have coped with going to work on top of everything.

But this is getting boring now. And if I’m bored by it all, I’m sure you are too. So I’m not going to write anymore about it.

****
On Sunday, Alison (aka Number 6) decided to spend the day with us, celebrating ‘me’ – my birthday earlier in the month and the end of my treatment.

Alison knows that I love to photograph flowers and so we went to the Queen Vic Market and bought loads: carnations, daisies, bluegum leaves, wheat that had been spray painted, and others I have no names for.

The outside table was strewn with flowers and leaves and twine and special scissors for cutting the stems and ribbon; palings from a fallen-down fence were put to good use as a backdrop and a surface; a tabletop was perched on the backs of kitchen chairs so we could shoot against the white wall under the clothes line; a shiny black tile and a sheet of black cardboard was set up in the kitchen as a different kind of photographic space … in amongst this chaotic space Alison managed to create a beautiful bouquet, and a delicious dinner.

It was a fabulous way to spend an afternoon!

These are beautiful even though I don’t know what they’re called

These are just some of the shots I took – and if the wind stops I might take even more.

Thanks Alison! Let’s do it again some time.

Life

A hiatus

Posted on February 16, 2019February 16, 2019 by Sharon

Finally, life is back to normal.

I’m driving again, I’m back at work (and actually doing work), back at the gym (even doing some upper body work and this morning I ran almost 2kms as part of walk club), and I’m attending a photography course two nights a week plus doing the requisite homework for it.

My scars are healing well – one of them is virtually invisible (and in a spot that no one besides me would look anyway) and the other one is still a little red but otherwise fine.

It’s been four and a half weeks since my surgery, I’ve been to the final post-surgery checkup with the breast surgeon and she’s happy with my progress.

It feels like normal life and that feels good.

Except … I now have a schedule of radiotherapy treatments covering some of the fridge poetry I composed last weekend. Beautiful poems of tenderness and fragility.

Okay, I lie. The poems are words flung together with barely any thought and consequently are absurdly nonsensical.

You can only imagine how horrid the ones being covered are!

But the covering – the sheet of paper obscuring the absurdity of my fridge poetry – reminds me that life is not yet back to real normal.

I’m living in a hiatus. And I like it.

I can pretend that this particular episode is over and normal life has resumed … apart from the times I venture to the fridge, and when I have other appointments. Like the one on Tuesday last week.

I received the schedule on Tuesday last week when I went for my radiotherapy consultation. It started with a meeting with the finance person who gave me a patient card and explained what I needed to do with it, a parking permit allowing me to park on the hospital grounds for free during my treatment, and a hefty document explaining how the treatment will be financed.

I was startled to hear that it’s amazingly expensive – $24,000 to be precise although there might have been a few cents added in just to make it look like that wasn’t a number plucked out of midair. Thankfully we live in Australia and Medicare pays most of it. The out of pocket expense is a lot less, but still a substantial amount of money. I signed the forms and then was introduced to Katrina, one of the radio therapists. Until that particular moment in time I had never realised that was an actual job title.

Katrina led us to a part of the hospital we hadn’t visited before – I don’t think there are too many of them left – then into a cubicle where I had to take my clothes off – from the waist up – and put on a gown (opening at the front please). I put my clothes into one of the blue patient bags, handed it to Tim and followed Katrina into a room with a big machine in it. I lay down, put my arms above my head and held the handle bars as instructed, I was wriggled into position, then drawn on, wriggled into a slightly different position, lowered, moved backward then forward, raised, had some sort of cube taped to my stomach, drawn on some more … I have to admit to feeling like one of the drawings on Mr Squiggle.

I put on the goggles as instructed, then watched as the yellow bar raised and lowered as I breathed. When I took a particularly deep breath the yellow bar went into the blue box at the top and turned green. I practised breathing and holding the green bar in the blue box (holding my breath), as instructed, then breathed normally. Okay, we’re going to start the first scan now, says a disembodied voice close to my right ear. Breathe normally.

I breathed normally watching the yellow bar float up and down, my arms starting to tingle from being held above my head for so long. The screen in the goggles went to a white square and static-like lines criss-crossed it.

Silence.

I lay still.

We’re going to have to stop there, said the voice.

Apparently, the CT scanner had stopped working. They turned it off and back on again but then engineers were mentioned and I wondered if I could put my arms down. When it was decided that getting it going again would take quite some time, I was able to put my arms down, remove the goggles, but before I could get up they did a tracing of all the drawings they’d done on me. When I say ‘drawings’ I really just mean crosses. The tracing is in case the crosses wear/wash off between now and my treatment.

Can you come back in on Thursday morning so we can do the full scan? Sure.

The crosses had washed off by Thursday so the tracing proved its worth. Less wriggling, fewer drawings, scanner at full power the whole time, yellow bar turning green as it moved into the blue box, breathe normally again thanks Sharon. Apparently I’m very good at the breathing! Years of experience, I tell them.

There’s a blood vessel at the bottom of the heart that falls in the zone of the radiotherapy treatment, as does the bottom of the lung, so holding my breath means the blood vessel and lung are lifted out of the way. It’s a simple yet clever innovation in treatment which not every radiotherapy clinic offers.

Second scan complete, I pick up the new schedule, drive home and put it on the fridge, a reminder that it’s not quite over.

Because of the delay in doing the scan, my treatment will now start on Thursday 21 February at 8am. That’s the day I’m running a new staff induction day at work. The induction day is sure to take my mind off the beginning of treatment and plunge me back into work reality – at least that’s my hope.

I don’t really know what’s in store for me as I go through treatment, but I’ll find out soon enough.

In the meantime I’m enjoying the hiatus.

Flowers, Life

Time for Sunday Stills

Posted on November 4, 2018November 8, 2018 by Sharon

I can’t believe it’s Sunday again. The time between when I created a post for last week’s Sunday Stills challenge and now has whizzed by!

As I have lots of other things to do – mostly marking university assignments – I thought I’d procrastinate a little longer and think about time for this week’s Sunday Stills challenge. Once again I’m inspired by my sister over at Deb’s World. Deb has a brand new granddaughter who is 7 weeks old already – and she thinks time is moving fast. My second eldest grandson turned 18 on Friday – boy oh boy, where has that time gone?

You might have noticed, if you’re a regular visitor here, that I take photos [that was weird … I was going to write “I’m a photographer”, but I felt a bit strange calling myself a photographer so wrote something slightly awkward … I wonder what that’s about??] … anyway, I take photos and one of the elements of photography is time.

Photographs stop time … they catch a moment that will never happen again. A moment in a baby’s life we look back on with fondness for ever after – the dimples around the knees, the chubby cheeks, the little hands balled into fists and, if we’re lucky, the firsts … first smile, first feed with Dad, first time nodding off on Grandma’s shoulder, first book, first Harry Potter dress. Those moments are cherished and we scroll through our photo album (no need to turn pages anymore because the photos are now locked away on our phones) to remind ourselves of the joy the little bundle brings to the whole family.

Over the last few weekends, Tim and I have been photographing flowers. It’s Spring after all, and there are plenty around. The flowers we photographed two weeks ago won’t be there anymore and the only way we can keep them fresh for all time is through our photographs.

Photographs capture time … they freeze it. The flower and the photograph of the flower will forever be different. One fades away while the other can live on through time.

So here are a few images of flowers frozen in time. None of them look like this anymore, but I was blessed to have been able to capture them in all their glory.

The first one is especially for Deb – who loves all things orange.

Time … it passes … so let’s make the most of it while we have it!

Flowers, Nature

Orange Sunday for Sunday Stills

Posted on October 28, 2018October 28, 2018 by Sharon

Deb, my blogging sister extraordinaire over at Deb’s World, just responded to a weekly photo challenge.

I don’t generally do photo challenges or get involved with the blogging community … I’m not the most social person you’ll come across … but when I saw this week’s challenge was orange, I thought … why not?

So here I am.

To be honest, I don’t really know how photo challenges work – there’s info about tagging and sharing and linked-up posts and I don’t know what any of that means … but here’s the link to the Sunday Still Photo Challenge

The theme this week is Orange.

I love photographing flowers, and some of the flowers I photograph are orange:

I also like to do the odd conceptual photo shoot like this one, using water, washing up liquid, oil and some orange cardboard.

So there you have it … orange.

Sharon

Flowers, Life

368

Posted on October 24, 2017October 24, 2017 by Sharon

My aunt, mum’s younger sister, came to stay recently, travelling, for the first time, on her own from interstate on the train. We had a lovely week together – a mix of busy days and new adventures, and other days of rest and calm.

A few days after she left, gorgeous flowers arrived as a thank you. Aunty Jan had told the florist to choose the flowers carefully because the recipients were photographers ‘of note’. While that’s possibly over-stating things (but thank you AJ), I did spend some time photographing them.

The flowers were predominantly yellow and brightened the kitchen beautifully. Here’s just one of them in the late afternoon light…