flower photography – Page 30 – Ann Mackay: Inspired by Nature

Passion-Flowers are Perfect for Photography

November 11, 2018March 10, 2021 Ann Mackay13 Comments

The first time I saw a passion-flower was many years ago, on a holiday in England. It was the usual Passiflora ‘caerulea’, the blue passion flower. It seemed impossibly exotic for a flower growing in the UK at that time. And for someone still living in Scotland, with the colder winters there, the idea of growing one seemed to be pure fantasy.

A few years later I found some plants of ‘caerulea’ for sale in an Edinburgh shop and just couldn’t resist buying one – and, of course, taking lots of photographs of the extraordinary flowers. Later on, I managed to buy a plant of Passiflora ‘Amethyst’ (top photo) and became thoroughly hooked on these beautiful climbers.

For photography they’re a wonderful subject. From further away, the flower is graceful. Every part of it is elegant. There’s the shape of the petals and the way the strands of the corona are held in a ring. And then there’s the sculptural quality of the reproductive parts of the flower.

If you come closer in, there are plenty of details to photograph. You have the way the strands of the corona change from dark purple at the centre, to white, to blue at the outside. You’ll also see the dark purple mottling of spots that covers the three ‘styles’, with more, less pronounced purple spots on the five green ‘filaments’ that hold the anthers.

The plants in these pictures were in pots sitting on a tiled conservatory floor, so I used a large sheet of white paper to give a plain background. Because the plants can be an untidy mass of leaves and stems, each flower was gently disentangled from the rest of the plant and the stem holding it was stretched across the white background. This isolated the flowers, got rid of background distractions, and allowed a bolder image to be made.

For the photograph at the bottom, I decided to simplify things further and removed a few of the leaves on that stem. (Cruelty to plants!) Then I placed the flower, with its leaf and the little tendril, in a way that would create a composition with the shadows that they cast.

Before taking close-up photographs like this, it’s a really good idea to check that there’s no dust or bits on your backdrop and that there aren’t any wee beasties in the plant (unless you want them there). It’s frustrating to open an image in Photoshop just to find some tiny critter practically waving and shouting, ‘Yeah, I’m here!’ And if you have pets, don’t forget to check for hairs. I have two cats, one long-haired, and it’s just amazing to see where those fine hairs can get to. (Thank goodness for Photoshop’s heal and clone tools!)

I’m always on the lookout for plants that will make good photographs. Many of the plants in the garden here are chosen this way. So you can imagine my delight when we moved into this house and I discovered that the neighbours had a blue passion-flower that was sneaking under the fence into our garden. There was great excitement when the first flowers opened. Sadly, the plant disappeared. I don’t know if it was due to a very cold winter or if the neighbours decided to get rid of it.

As you would expect, I soon got some plants of my own and the two you see in the photos here are currently living in our conservatory. (I’m trying to learn not to over-water them. They like better drainage than I had thought and I’ve nearly lost them a couple of times!)

In the garden, I’m trying ‘Constance Elliot’, which has pure white flowers and is said to be scented. It’s growing over an arbour and seems to be doing well but I don’t know if it’s hardy enough to come through a cold winter. (Mulching it should help.) It hasn’t flowered yet – that’s something to look forward to next year.

If you’re reading this from somewhere warmer than the UK, passion-flowers may be a common sight for you. You may have some of the more tender varieties that, here in England, I can only dream of. I wonder if there are plants that won’t grow where you are, that you really wish you could have? Do let me know in the comments!

The blue passionflower - Passiflora 'caerulea' — The blue passion-flower – Passiflora ‘caerulea’

The Last Flowers

October 28, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay6 Comments

Autumn is beautiful. Golden light filters through the trees, with their jewel-bright leaves set against a vibrant blue sky. (If you’re lucky – and we have been.)

Except when it’s not. Friday was suddenly grey and cold here in the east of England. Autumn quickly became a bit more serious and a heavy shower of hail was a brusque reminder that winter isn’t far off. (And the clocks going back this weekend will mean that time spent in the garden will have to finish earlier. There’s still lots of work to do out there and I have been known to continue until it’s dark.)

As always, I’m planning for the future and growing as much as I can to provide myself with flowers and plants to photograph. At the moment I’m working on the last bit of planting for the year. It should make a difference to next autumn, as the plants are mostly late-flowering. One that I’ve chosen because it is so good to photograph is Hesperanthus, also known as ‘Crimson Flag’. (You can see it in the picture above.) The plant used to be called Schizostylis, but the name changed a few years ago. Gardening is confusing at times!

Despite the cold turn to the weather, there are still some flowers in the garden. Geranium ‘Rozanne’ (pictured above) is still flowering its little socks off. I planted it late last autumn, so this is the first year that I’ve been able to see how long it will continue. It has done really well – flowering from early in the summer and still being well-covered in flowers now. I’m really glad of this, because it’s my chosen subject for the last week of my Natural History Illustration course. There aren’t many other flowers left in the garden for me to draw! (You can read about the drawing class here. It has been very worthwhile and now I feel that I’ll be able to continue to learn on my own.)

Elsewhere in the garden, there is a sprinkling of penstemon flowers, the last of the asters that are just about to finish, and some small dark crimson dianthus (pinks) that seem content to flower for a long time. The happy surprise has been to see how well a clump of Gaura lindheimeri is doing. I’ve tried to grow it a couple of times before and lost it in cold winters. This plant has survived and has been in flower from early summer. Its white, moth-like flowers are now creating a delicately lovely picture in combination with the red fruits of crab-apple ‘Royal Beauty’.

Have you any suggestions for extending the flowering season towards winter? I’d love to know what you grow – please feel free to comment!

Gaura linderheimeri flower in front of the fruits of malus ‘Royal Beauty’

Waterlilies: Beautiful, Exotic, Mysterious…

October 14, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay10 Comments

The waterlily is one of the most enchanting plants and it has held a fascination for humans right throughout history.

Sacred in Egypt, India and China from ancient times, the waterlily has become a symbol of many things: renewal of life, immortality, purity, divinity, enlightenment.

So when we look at these beautiful flowers, we’re aware of more than just the waterlily itself. We feel the magic of all the associations that have grown up around it. We get caught, ever so slightly, in its spell…

A hardy pink waterlily in an outdoor pond.

Before the age of around 20, I had only ever seen waterlilies in photographs or paintings. Never in ‘real life’. (I don’t think I’d even seen a garden pond during my childhood on Scotland’s north coast. The climate there isn’t exactly encouraging to serious gardening.) The first time I saw one in a garden (somewhere much further south), I was entranced. The flower seemed like something foreign and entirely exotic and that impression has stayed with me. Since then, I’ve always been delighted when the chance comes to photograph them.

Photographing flowers in someone else’s garden is always a little tricky. Usually it’s not possible to use a tripod, so close-up work is difficult. You must be so very careful not to stand on any plants or brush against anything that you might damage. But waterlilies are even more awkward. Frequently the flowers are just too far away or they’re sitting at an angle that means you can’t see them properly. It’s wonderful when you find waterlilies growing right by the edge of the pond and when you can get close enough to them without the danger of taking an unintentional nose-dive into the water!

As you might expect then, the idea of being able to photograph waterlilies in my own garden really appeals to me. Currently I am starting to dig out a pond. Actually, it’s only a small hole so far – I’m digging an exploratory trench so that I can work out where pipes run and hopefully avoid them. Today it has been raining for a few hours and I’m really grateful because it will make the hard ground much easier to dig. (Digging is much better left until after we’ve had some rainy weather. Summer here is so hot and dry that the ground bakes as hard as stone.)

It will probably take quite while to get my pond made and to work out what to plant around it. But I do already have a couple of little waterlily plants. They were given to me by a kind friend who was sorting out her own pond. At the moment they’re planted up in a pond basket which is sitting in a huge plastic box. So far they seem quite happy (and they even have a little frog who likes to lurk in the pond basket beside them) but I’ll be glad when I can give them a proper home. And then I’ll have to wait and see what colour (pink or red) they are…

Do any plants enchant you – I’d love to know in the comments!

Translucence

September 30, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay15 Comments

Yellow tulip back-lit to show detail of petals

One of the ways I like to photograph flowers is to light them from behind. It brings out the translucent nature of the petals, allows the colour to glow, and shows up details that you wouldn’t see under normal front-lighting.

In the photograph of the yellow tulip above, I wanted to show the delicate lines of the veins in the petals. Without the back-lighting, they would have been pretty much invisible, but here, with the light coming through the petals, they are much easier to see.

The layering of the petals where they overlap one another creates areas of varying shade and this helps to give emphasis to the petals’ curving shapes. It also creates variations within the yellow of the tulip – more interesting, I think, than the flatter tones I’d have got if I had just lit the flower from the front.

While the yellow tulip was photographed to give a realistic image, the green clematis above has had its colour exaggerated by the lighting and it was then saturated a bit more in Photoshop. If the flower petals are thick enough, the light from behind can make the colour appear richer. However, if you give this technique a try, you’ll find that the results will vary with the strength of the light coming through the petals and how much the petals themselves allow light to pass through. If you use a flower with very thin petals, the colour may become much lighter and you could instead create an image with very soft, delicate colours – a lovely effect.

I can’t remember the name of the clematis below (this one grew in my garden in Scotland), but I hope I’ll find the same one again because these pinky-purply shades are among my favourite colours.

In this photograph, the petals on the left-hand side have the light coming through them from behind but the right-hand petals are lit from the front. That was because I wanted to light the centre of the flower to capture the detail there. As a result, the veins of the petals on the left show up very clearly, but the petals on the right have a much more solid appearance and you can see the slight magenta marking on the petal’s midrib.

A set-up like this is very easy to do if you can find a lightbox of the kind that’s used for viewing slides and negatives. These boxes have a translucent ‘opal’ top surface with daylight-balanced light tubes behind. All you have to do is lay your flowers on top and add some soft light to the front of the flower if you want to show the detail of the stamens etc. (Otherwise they would be likely to be in silhouette.) For the frontal lighting, you need to make sure that it isn’t too strong, otherwise it would drown the effect of the back-lighting. Soft, overcast light from a window would be the easiest thing to try.

If you try this back-lighting technique, remember to check that the light isn’t making your flowers hot and wilting them. You can always take them away from the lights in between shots, even give them a rest in some water for a while.

Comments are always very welcome – please feel free to add yours!

Monochrome (and Duotone) Magic

September 23, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay9 Comments

Spider Lily (Hymenocallis x festalis) duotone

Sometimes I prefer the look of a photograph that has been converted to black and white, rather than the original colour version. And it can be even better if it has had some ‘toning’ added in Photoshop.

So why should that be? For some photographs, it may simply be that the original colours don’t work well together – as with the ‘Spider Lily’ above. The flower was growing in front of our house, which is painted ‘Suffolk Pink’. I didn’t like the pink wall as a background because it distracted from the flower too much.

Converting the picture to plain black and white got rid of the distraction but the result wasn’t terribly exciting, so the colour tones were added to create a bit of extra interest. This has given a look very like a cyanotype print which has been toned in tea. (Does that sound odd? Ordinary tea makes a great toner for cyanotype prints – takes the harshness out of the blue and turns the white paper a soft cream/brown shade.)

Crown Imperials (Fritillaria imperialis)

Other photographs may benefit from simplification. With the ‘Crown Imperials’ above, I was attracted by the lines of the veins on the petals, and to a lesser extent, by the way the curve of one of the leaves at the top echoes the curve of the petals below it. But in the original, the orange of the flower and the green leaves that contrasted with it competed too much for attention. Here, with the image as a monochrome, your eye can more easily follow the lines along the petals.

Both of the photographs below worked well in colour but the blue and brown duotone of the agapanthus and the warm pinky-brown monochrome of the astrantia give the images a new life. They have become something entirely different from the photographs I started with. (You can see the original colour photograph of the astrantia here. )

I think that the toned versions of the photographs work because their subjects no longer look as they do in nature. Without their normal colouring, the flowers are somehow unfamiliar. Because of this, they are able to be seen in a different way. Now there is a possibility that you may notice new details or simply react with feelings that the original colour versions wouldn’t have inspired.

It’s very satisfying to experiment with photographs in this way. There can be a restfulness, even an elegance, to the restricted colours in the final image.

If you fancy trying this on your own photographs, you’ll find that it’s not hard to do if you have an image-editing program. Photoshop, for instance, allows you to convert the photograph to black and white. You can then alter the colour in any way you like, using the ‘Colour Balance’ adjustment on the shadows, midtones and highlights or you can try the more complex controls available in the ‘Curves’ commands. (I should think that there are other possibilities with newer versions of Photoshop than mine.) And, of course, there are many other monochrome effects out there that you can try. You could have hours of fun with these!

Ever So Pretty In Pink: Cyclamen

August 26, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay2 Comments

Some flowers have a personality all of their own.

This little cyclamen looks to me as if it (she?) is all dressed up for a party in ‘her’ best dress – in frills, flounces and soft pleats of magenta silk. She’s a real show-off, dancing around with her skirt swishing and swirling around her.

Even the details of this glamorous bloom are exquisite. The cap behind the petals has the appearance a soft fabric, contrasting with the silky smoothness of the petals. I can just imagine this as an embroidered velvet, with perhaps some tiny seed beads added into the stitch-work. (Can you tell that I’m interested in textile art?)

By the way, I just had to go and look at a botany book to find that the ‘cap’ is actually the calyx, made up of leaf-like sepals.

Close-up of calyx and petals of pink Cyclamen persicum cultivar — The velvety-looking calyx surrounded by silky, swirling petals

It seems odd then, that earlier relatives of this flower had the distinctly earthy common name of ‘sowbread’. This was because the root of the plant, despite being poisonous to both man and most animals, was believed to be a favourite food of wild boar. (I don’t know about that, but I have seen a grey squirrel run across my garden with a nice fat cyclamen tuber in its mouth.)

The name ‘cyclamen’ also comes from the plant’s root (a disc-shaped tuber). It is derived from the Greek word ‘kyklos’ (circle).

The ancient Greeks, according to Hippocrates, used cyclamen in their medicine. Over the centuries its uses have been very varied. It was used for dressing wounds and was also thought to help ease childbirth but feared as a danger to pregnant women. In medieval times, the tuber was believed so powerful that if it was worn around the neck, or its juice smeared on the belly, that it could trigger a miscarriage.

Other uses for cyclamen root have been as diverse as using it to make soap (the tuber contains saponins) and fishermen using it to stun fish. (The fishermen would grate the toxic root and sprinkle it over water where there were fish. They would then gather the stunned fish that floated to the surface. Makes me wonder if the fish became at all toxic to eat…)

Today cyclamen is, despite its toxicity, still used in homeopathy. But it is far more likely that you’ll come across one of the many cultivars as either a beautiful (but tender) houseplant or as a hardy autumn or spring-flowering plant for your garden. Whichever they are, they’re little beauties!

Pink Cyclamen persicum — The swirling petals almost appear to be moving…

Variations on a Theme

August 19, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay4 Comments

Two white Japanese anemones in a bottle.

One of the good things about photographing flowers is that it’s fairly easy to come up with different images of your subject. (Much easier than having to hike miles around a landscape to find a different viewpoint.)

Variations of the image can be created while photographing or afterwards in the computer, using an image-editing program.

The top image (a version of the photograph below) has had textures added to it in Photoshop to give a softer, more romantic feel.

White Japanese anemones — The photograph as originally shot.

These ‘textures’ are simply photographs of a textured surface, usually with just one all-over colour but perhaps with a darkened edge and corners to give a vignette effect.

Photoshop makes it possible to stack the textured images above the original photograph and then to alter the opacity of the textured images. (Imagine looking through a stack of images printed on clear plastic – that gives some idea of how it works.) Controlling the opacity of the layers means that you can decide exactly how much of the textured layers show in your final image.

In this case, the textures I used were an image of a canvas weave and another of a lightly scratched surface. The opacity of the scratched surface was set very low, so that it hardly showed, while the canvas texture was set higher and made more visible.

If you decide to try out this ‘textures’ technique, there is another Photoshop tool that you’ll want to use – ‘Blend Modes’.

Blend Modes give control over how the different layers interact with each other. This tool can produce very subtle effects but it can also create something decidedly weird. Trying out the different settings is the best way to find out what they do. (And time can all too easily disappear as you play with all the possibilities…)

To prevent the details of the main flower from being obscured, I kept the textures off this area. This also removed the colour of the textures from the flower, so I added a plain pale yellow layer to unify the flower with the rest of the image.

(It would probably be simpler to just blur the textured area over the flower. This would remove the detail of the textures but allow the colour of the textured area to remain.)

After taking the first photograph, I decided to try something a bit bolder. This time I chose a very dark green background. Because very little light was hitting the background, it looks almost black and creates a strong contrast with the flowers.

White Japanese anemones against a dark background. — Same flowers (Japanese anemones), but a much more dramatic image.

For the second photograph, I changed the lighting to add to the contrast. (Both were lit with studio flash.)

The first photograph had been taken with a soft, well-diffused light (a softbox brought close to the flowers and a large reflector to the side). The result was to give a very even light with the reflector bouncing light back into the areas that would otherwise have been in shadow. This allowed the details in the petals to show and helped to give a gentle, delicate feel to the photograph.

To create the more contrasty lighting for the second photograph, I simply moved the light further away (and, of course, turned up the light output to make up for the increased distance). Moving a studio light further away creates a ‘harder’ light with stronger highlights and shadows. (Just think of how the sun creates such harsh shadows – it’s a very distant light source.)

Taking the reflector away also increased the contrast by removing the light that it would have bounced into the shadows. I think the end result is probably as far as I could push the contrast before I started to lose too much detail in the petals.

As with the first photograph, I decided to play around with textured layers to see what the effect would be. The result is much softer than the original photo and goes to show how different the image can become once you start experimenting with the different possibilities. I think there’s plenty to keep me busy for quite a while!

White Japanese anemones against teal background — The textured background creates a softer feel.

Red Hot

August 12, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay2 Comments

After such high temperatures recently, it seems appropriate to post some pictures that suggest summer heat.

It’s not often that I get the chance to photograph bright red or orange flowers. That’s a shame. really, because there’s nothing quite so bold and brilliant or downright fiery.

Red and yellow dahlia — Dahlia on fire – red and yellow petals look like little dancing flames.

Red is a colour that I’ve been a bit over-cautious with in the garden. There are some dark reds – penstemons, clematis, and a scabious that likes to pop up everywhere. And there’s a nice little red potentilla too, but that hasn’t done very well this year.

An exception is the one very bright orangey-red oriental poppy that leans over the path to the greenhouse and all but grabs you by the ankle as you pass. There’s absolutely no ignoring it when it’s in flower but by August it feels like a distant memory.

There’s even less orange in the garden. (Though I now have a lovely clump of crocosmias that were given to me by a friend.)

Hot orange rose — A radiant rose, glowing in the summer sun.

The reason for the lack of hot colours here is that we had planted the garden up in softer colours to create a calm, peaceful atmosphere. (Or maybe just a place to have a sneaky snooze in the shade…)

Now it’s time to wake things up a bit with a touch of heat. Time to be a bit more adventurous. (And I’d really like the opportunity to photograph more bold, zingy, hot-summer flowers….of course I would!)

What are your favourite bold flowers? Any red or orange ones that you especially like? Planting ideas and suggestions are very welcome in the comments. (And I love an excuse to go to a garden centre!)

Red alstroemeria — You can almost feel the heat from this alstroemeria.

Rain At Last!

July 29, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann MackayLeave a comment

It’s never been so good to see rain. We’re in Suffolk in the UK and this summer has been hotter and drier than any I’ve experienced before.

With record-breaking temperatures and no rain for many weeks, gardeners here have been frantically watering and worrying about whether their gardens would survive.

Somehow we’ve been lucky. Only a few of the plants in our garden have been badly affected.

One of these is the Japanese anemone ‘September Charm’. (Despite its name, it always starts to flower here by the end of July and finishes in August.) This year’s flowers are smaller and some of the leaves are wilting. But I haven’t watered it because it’s a rampant thug and I’m trying to discourage it from spreading everywhere. (Despite its ambitions to take over, it can stay because it’s a good subject to photograph.)

Another plant which is struggling, even though I water it, is a lovely blue veronica. I really hope it survives because the slim spires of flower work so well as a contrast to the other plant shapes in the border.

A careful eye is kept on our one bush hydrangea and so far it’s doing quite well, with just the occasional watering. (Bath-time for the tiny frogs that are living under it at the moment!) It might not be the most suitable plant for our hot, dry garden but I had to have it – the lacecap flowers are lovely to photograph.

(There are also a couple of climbing hydrangeas, but I never water them and they seem to do just fine.)

Many other plants have coped well with the drought. A hibiscus (‘Blue Bird’) has had very infrequent watering. (I have a sneaky dodge here. I’ve pushed a length of plastic pipe into the ground beside the rootball. Watering into the pipe means that the water is carried right down deep to the roots.)

Hibiscus 'Blue Bird' flower — Hibiscus ‘Blue Bird’ has flowered well this year.

Other happy plants include a number of trees and shrubs. (The mature ones seem to have had no problems.) I’ve been particularly impressed by a purple smoke bush, ceanothus, dark-leaved elders (‘Black Lace’ and ‘Black Beauty’), a Himalayan indigo and a cut-leaf lilac (Syringa x laciniata), all of which are still relatively young and have had no watering at all this summer.

Many of the smaller plants that have done well (agapanthus, sedums, salvias, gaura, Russian sage, Anthemis tinctoria, stipa tenuissima) were chosen after reading ‘Beth Chatto’s Gravel Garden’. This is a tremendously useful book which takes you season-by-season through everything you need to know about creating a garden that will survive drought and I can really recommend it.

Have you any tips for keeping a garden going through drought conditions? Any ideas, suggestions for good plants etc. would be very welcome in the comments…

Blue agapanthus flowers — Agapanthus has done well despite the drought.

Sunny Yellows

July 22, 2018March 11, 2021 Ann Mackay5 Comments

I don’t have a lot of yellow in my garden.

There’s some – we have a winter-flowering jasmine and following that there are the spring bulbs. (A few crocuses, lots more daffodils and some bright yellow tulips that have probably been in the garden for many years.)

Later, as different flowers open, the garden turns largely lilac, pink, and blue. There are also lots of deep reds, bronzes and browns. These darker shades could seem a bit sombre, so a touch of yellow in summer enlivens the whole garden.

The richest and most intense of the yellows in the garden here is the rudbekia. It’s a plant that I’ve lost in the past because it prefers a moist soil and our rainfall in this part of the UK (Suffolk) is very low. During the drought this year, I’m having to keep it well-watered. Fingers crossed that this one will survive!

Easier yellows have included a potentilla and the little daisy flowers of Anthemis tinctoria ‘E. C. Buxton’, both of which have produced a mass of flowers over a long period. Easier still is the evening primrose, because it self-seeds generously and just pops up wherever it feels like it. It’s a delight to come across the unexpected pale gleam of its flowers as night begins to fall.

Another easy way to add some yellow is to simply buy a few plants in pots. I’ve done this when I’ve spotted something I want to photograph. (Oh, that happens a lot!)

yellow chrysanthemum with water drops — Chrysanthemum grown in a pot to photograph

The daisy flowers of chrysanthemums and the elegant flowers of calla lilies are inviting subjects to photograph. And the yellow of the flowers here makes a change from the pinks, blues and purples that I more often have available for my photography.

yellow calla lilies — I enjoy photographing calla lilies

For the future, there’s a yellow flower that I’d like to grow here that will be the cause of a lot more work than any of the others. A waterlily. (Of course, I like to photograph waterlilies in other colours too.)

First, I’m going to have to build a pond….but that’s a project for the autumn and early winter because the ground is now rock hard. (We haven’t had a drop of rain in many weeks and there’s none forecast for the next couple of weeks either.)

I think the work will be well worth it, though. (But my back will probably disagree!) For I do love pond plants, especially waterlilies.

I hope you enjoyed this little bit of sunshine!