Rainy Day Play

Yesterday I bought a pretty bouquet of roses and carnations to photograph. Actually I bought them to play with a new (to me) photography technique called the Ventosa Photography Technique.

I began working on photographs yesterday and then continued today. With the rain coming down this afternoon it’s a great kind of

I made numerous images this morning and yesterday afternoon of single roses, turning the vase a tiny bit between each photograph. And I also tried using several flowers in a small vase, a technique that didn’t work well at all. After the images are created, I load them all into layers in Photoshop and then tweak the opacity and blend modes of the layers and sometimes also move the layers so that flowers line up better. Once I’m happy with the image I’ve created I save it into a single image with all of the different layers.

“Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise—you can make anything. So please calm down now and get back to work, okay? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

It surprised me how challenging it is to turn a vase slightly but still keep it in the same relative spot in the camera frame. Even with a grid displayed it’s surprisingly difficult to maintain the same distance and location. I love some of the tree images I’ve seen where the photographer circled a tree, from the same distance, making up to 100 photos from all sides of the tree.

I hope to play with this technique more tomorrow as I am finding it an interesting new way to create dreamy looking images of nature.

“your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous, and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you’re still here.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

What have you been learning lately? Are there new creative experiments you’d like to try?

May you walk in beauty.

P.S. Thanks to my friend Judith for introducing me to this photography method.