Anthurium is a very common plant in Hawaii. Some of the more prime (I'm assuming) varieties were chosen for the botanical garden I visited. I did not take a liking to this plant, I find it shiny, falic, and dis-jointed looking. Despite this, the result of my shoot with this plant had me twitching in my seat when I got home. To show you what it actually looks like I took this image:
Photographer's notes: taken at 1/60th of a sec. at f/9, ISO 500, exp. -1 2/3 these settings don't make for a great file, but I just had to do whatever I needed to to get a fast enough shutter speed to hand hold, and I knew it would only be used for the web.
It's a fine plant, really. Nature is beautiful in all forms, but it's just not my favourite. However, something stopped me from just walking away. I think it was the question: how can I photograph this in a way that I like? It's obviously a prominent plant in Hawaii, and I should have a record of it.
So, I switched my thinking. I stopped looking at the flower as "anthurium" and looked at it as red, leaf shapped (which is a pleasing shape), white line, ridged texture etc. Breaking down the meaning of what I was looking at. Then I started thinking of myselft as a painter.
Chris and I were talking about this idea of thinking of yourself as a painter. Painters -these are Chris' words that I'm paraphrasing-have to create a composition completely in their mind, and then bring it onto the canvas. THAT is a challenge. As a photographers, everything we have to work with is out there. It's far easier to work with what's there, and simply arrange it somehow.
For me, "I am a painter" is a quick way to say I am pushing myself past the documentary. Painters, especially impressionistic painters, make decisions about their composition and colour based on what they want to show, or say, or what mood they want to express. I seek to do the same thing, except instead of a brush, paints, and whatever other wonderful things a painter choses to use, I have a camera, it's settings, what's around me, the slider adjustments in the darkroom, my hands, and I won't even begin to list the things contained in my mind that I don't even know the extent of.
So on that note, here is one of the abstract images of the anthurium that I created. I won't tell you exactly what I did, I will leave it to you to trace the path and expression of my brush.
Photogrpaher's notes: 0.5 sec, f/25, exp. -1 2/3, ISO 100
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