My favorite project this semester was our landscape or still life project where we visited the green house. I really enjoyed working on balancing the light so the colors were true to life and using color to convey a mood. I value nature and spending time outside so I wanted to capture the beauty in the world and share that with other- especially after my last project on derealization was so dark.

I returned to the green house on one of our studio days now that I was more comfortable with my camera and with editing images in Photoshop. I revisited some of the same plants but focused on ones that I was unable to capture to my satisfaction during my first visit. I focused on conveying texture and color throughout this series. I was inspired by our Altered Perceptions project to represent a different sense through a visual medium- I wanted viewers to be able to feel the grit of the bark and the softness of the flower petals in my images.

I also visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens to photograph the cherry blossoms and plants on a day with more light as when I visited the green house it was raining and overcast. I focused on plants I hadn’t seen before and, of course, those with interesting textures. In Photoshop, I edited the photos to all have a golden or blue hue to create a cohesive series despite the different locations and lighting.

I was inspired to focus on texture when I saw an article on Lenscratch about Wendi Schneider’s work States of Grace– images from the series including “Flamingo,” “Cicada,” and “Datura” captured the lightness and piece-y texture of feathers, the dryness and fragility of a dead cicada, and wrinkled but plump texture of the flower exquisitely.