Category: flower

11-05-16 Another World

Can you feel your shirt touching your shoulder right now? (read and see more)

By Scott Shephard

If you drove by these plumeria flowers every day as you entered your driveway, you probably wouldn’t see them. Like so many things that we see, feel, hear or smell all of the time, even beautiful flowers become white noise. To get you to consider white noise, here are two tests:

1) List 5 features of the street side of your neighbor-to-the-left’s house. If you’ve lived in your neighborhood for a year or for decades, you’ve probably seen your neighbor’s house hundreds or even thousands of times. My guess is that while you’ve seen your neighbors house, you’ve never really looked at it. The features of the house are likely examples of white noise to you.

2)If you are wearing a shirt right now, what does it feel like? The skin is a profoundly sensitive organ but because it is in constant contact with something all of the time, the sensations become white noise.

So here’s my point: if you take your camera outside and, with your neighbor’s permission, take 10 photos of various features of the front of their house, those features cease to be white noise. They might even become essential and even fascinating. They might also become something you notice every time you drive by the house. The same could be said for your shirt. Can you feel it touching your shoulders and back? What does it feel like?

So back to these beautiful plumeria . . . Because I had my camera in hand when I walked by them, because I had only been in this neighborhood for a day and because they were new and foreign to my experience, I couldn’t help but notice them. And now you see them too.

Such is the power of photography. As for feeling your shirt, I hope the sensations they cause generally remain as white noise. Otherwise, it will drive you crazy . . . .

How about a view of the neighborhood and a couple other takes on these flowers?:

 

Canon 5DIII 1/750s f/2.8 ISO400 100mm

04-07-16 Columbine

Another hint of things to come. . . (read more)

By Scott Shephard

Unfortunately, when some of us hear the word “Columbine,” we think of the school shooting that happened in Colorado in April, 2009. And I’m sorry to bring that up . . . .

But if you want to think of something brighter, think “delicate flower” and think of this picture. The name columbine comes from the Latin word for dove, a bird which produces a soothing sound and which is the symbol of peace. I like that. Further, if you didn’t know it, the columbine flower is the state flower of Colorado.

Canon D60 1/40s f/5.6 ISO200 120mm (35mm eq:192mm)

04-06-16 Rite of Spring

These small flowers are dangerous non-conformists.

By Scott Shephard

As I look out of my office window, I am more conscious than ever of the fact that the building covenants in our neighborhood are what I am calling “anti-color.” That translates as “earth tones” which translates as “dull.”

Add heavy clouds, light haze and mostly brown grass to the nearly colorless painting schemes and you have a prescription for the early spring South Dakota blues.

A pill might help. But how about taking in bright, purple crocus flowers, which seem to flaunt the color covenants in our part of town instead? You have to get down on your hands and knees to see them as they are pictured here. But why not bow down to this wonderful little iconoclast?

Canon 5DII 1/250s f/3.2 ISO400 100mm 

03-26-16 A Different Point of View

There are, of course, many ways to see the same thing. (read more)

By Scott Shephard

I showed you three views of the same plant yesterday and today I am showing a a much more literal way to see it. This plant (name???) is the same variety as the one pictured yesterday, though in a different state of bloom.

Except for my photography, I am not a control freak. But I do enjoy exercising the ability to get my viewers to see what I want them to see it as I want them to see it. Sorry if you feel manipulated. 🙁

Canon 5DIII 1/1000s f/2.8 ISO400 100mm

03-25-16 Real Abstract

Can an object be real and abstract at the same time?

By Scott Shephard

To be “real” and “abstract” at the same time seems like a contradiction. But I think you are looking at an example. This flowering plant, which I photographed at Indian Canyons in southern California, is certainly real. What creates the abstraction has something to do with my use of focus and point of view and much to do with the fact that I’ve turned the photo into black and white.

I guess I like the ambiguity of the image. If I’m lucky, the ambiguity requires the viewer to impose meaning based on his or her own perceptions and experience. It’s like life itself.

Canon 5DIII 1/250s f/4.0 ISO250 102mm

(For those who need something less ambiguous, I offer two other views of this plant.)

03-16-16 Spring Has Sprung. . .

Spring has sprung, the grass has ris, I wonder . . . (read more)

By Scott Shephard

When Deb takes a photo of mine off the wall and puts it on the floor, it is her way of saying . . . . well, that she doesn’t want the picture on the wall.

She rarely does this and recently what she took down was my “Winter Triptych” which I’m sure she likes but which tends to remind us of something most South Dakotans want to forget: winter.

So I made what I am officially calling my “Spring/Summer Triptych.” It’s a creative title don’t you think? And for those wanting names for the flowers, from top to bottom, they are lily, crocus and flowering crab apple. I offer nothing fancy today; but I hope it is optimistic.