detail: Sunflowers – ‘Vincent’ x Vincent
Part of the commercial flower shoot for Sakata at the California Spring Trials were sunflowers, the variety ‘Vincent’. To get them for spring in California they were flown in from Holland, where they waited for two weeks until the show, for when I was on site to take pictures.
No, they did not look surreal and deformed, but I was excited all day as they called to me from the edge of the staging room. They were exquisite, and finally the Sakata folks stacked them in a bucket just perfectly for their moment under the lights. Only then did they became surreal; impossibly beautiful, impossible to simply click the shutter and move on to the zinnias. Though that is what I did. The day’s work was much greater than the one sunflower photo.
This is the makeshift studio at the Sakata offices.
When I got back home I opened the sunflower photo as soon as I could. It leapt into PhotoShop, and commanded the Topaz Simplify 3 filter tool. Then PhotoShop’s own liquify brush tool, painting the petals into gaps.
I can’t explain much more than that. It just happened.
Sunflowers – ‘Vincent’ x Vincent
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
This is just stunning and I’m sure Vincent would have approved! This is a perfect post for today as I read that May first is National Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day! Thanks for sharing both your work and processes.
National Sunflower Guerilla Gardening Day ?! Who knew ? Thanks a lot for letting me know
I love, love, LOVE your art. I stopped by because I saw a post you might be interested in and to my surprise you have a beautiful Photoshopped image. I should have left this link on GGW because of the discussion in your last post, but thought maybe it a bit controversial with all the ‘traditional’ photographers that visit that site. So I hope you find this post interesting. I know he speaks what I would love to say if my photography was as good as his, or yours for that matter. http://photofocus.com/2012/05/02/why-are-we-still-re-litigating-the-photoshop-wars/
Thanks Donna – A lot of or those “traditional” photographers don’t even think about using photoshop, which is fine but as the author of the link you posted said, for the serious photographers all of the new tools are just that, tools to help us realize what we see. However, I DO realize that if I am going to try and portray gardens to inspire others, I have some of the obligation of a photo-journalist. Over at GGW I do try to be more “straight” because of that expectation.