It’s been awhile since I picked up a bouquet of flowers to photograph. So today at the Food Coop I looked for a bouquet of summer flowers and found a beautiful bunch of mid-summery blossoms that were grown locally. It’s my personal
Flower Rx
for the soul.
As soon as I got home I filled a vase with warm water, added some flower food, and slowly trimmed the end of each stem from the bunch of flowers that I bought. One by one I tucked each stem into the water-filled vase, not really trying to arrange them any particular way.
It made me smile just doing this simple task and reminded me of a Mary Oliver poem I read recently.
Freshen the Flowers, She Said
So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain
was tender,
and took out the tattered and cut each stem
on a slant,
trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all-
roses, delphiniums, daises, iris, lilies,
and more whose names I don’t know, in bright new water-
gave thema bounce upward at the end to let them take
their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,
the little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,
perhaps fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of music
with nothing playing.— Mary Oliver
Creating Visual Poetry
After the flowers were trimmed I got out my tripod, camera, extension tubes (for close-ups), and nifty 50 lens and started playing. If I’m lucky the flowers will last long enough for a couple more days of play. I’ve learned that I often create images that I like better on the second or third day of photographing them. It’s like I need to take time to get to know them.
The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers–has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way.
For me, creating flower photographs is a kind of visual poetry. I never know where the flowers will lead me. But if I stay present and open, they reveal their hidden beauty.
Do you also get joy and sustenance from spending time with flowers? When was the last time you brought a bunch of flowers home to enjoy? Perhaps it’s time for your own personal Flower Rx.
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