Posted in Flowers, Life

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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…

Posted in Flowers, Life

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I wash my hair, towel it dry, shake my head … and it looks like this flower (just not yellow!).

The chrysanthemums were large, diverse, and plentiful at the Bendigo conservatory. Just like the people lining the streets.

Posted in Flowers, Learning

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I think I’ve picked the wrong time of year, but I’m going to return to flower photography for a while. I’ve concentrated on portraits for the last little while – although I haven’t featured many on this blog – but now I want to return to flowers.

I love photographing flowers – there are so many colours, so many shapes, so many sizes, so many types. An endless array – and we celebrate that. We cultivate variety, we actively plan for it in our parks and gardens if we are of a gardening bent, and if we aren’t we wander through the park or garden enjoying the variety, looking out for that one different flower. We are amazed at the size of some flowers. We take photos, paint them, adorn our homes with them. We buy them and give them as a token of our love or a symbol of our sorrow, or our appreciation.

There’s no pressure for flowers to be a particular way – they can have whirly bits, and squiggly bits, and movement-y bits; they can be white or yellow or pink or mauve or any colour they happen to be – and they’re all beautiful.

Wouldn’t it be good if we thought of ourselves and each other like that? If we celebrated our whirly bits and squiggly bits and movement-y bits? If we celebrated the variety of colours and shapes and sizes. If we were amazed by each other? How much kinder might we be if we looked at others and celebrated them the way we do with flowers?

Here’s today’s dahlia. Who is your dahlia?

Posted in Flowers, Learning

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I keep returning to the sunflowers – there’s something captivating about them: the depth of colour, the detail, the symmetry of each petal (or perhaps the lack of symmetry).

As I wrote in my long post on Monday last week, I enjoy the creative process. For me, photography isn’t capturing the scene in front of me – it’s not ‘taking a photo’ – it’s creating an image with a deliberate creativity that explores and plays and experiments with light and shape and form and style and depth.

What is photography to you?

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