Twenty-one Days of Amaryllis Photos

My love for amaryllis flowers began accidentally several years ago when I found some amaryllis bulbs encased in red wax at Trader Joe’s. The bulbs had all they needed to grow and bloom the tag said, no messy pot or regular watering needed. So I bought one bulb and brought it home. It grew and bloomed. I began photographing its flowers and fell in love with them. That was it for me. I was hooked on these dramatic long lasting flowers.

This year I bought two new amaryllis bulbs, planted them in late November and waited. The wait led me to today, and

Twenty-one Days

of Making Amaryllis Flower Photos this season. There are still more days to come, though the flowers are drooping, one large stem of flowers broke off (I placed it in a vase of water). Two other flowers blossoms broke off and I put them in a shallow bowl of water.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

   — Georgia O’Keeffe

But one stem of flowers has yet to burst into bloom (the second set of blooms one for one of the bulbs) so there are more photos to come.

This morning I collected all of this year’s photos and found I’d made over 600 photos of these flowers so far.

Why Do I Do This?

What makes me so obsessed with photographing these flowers? I think a lot of my enthusiasm comes from the fact that it is January in Minnesota and though there is beauty in the landscape, it’s darn cold outside and nice and warm in my house. Every morning when I eat breakfast in our dining room/photo studio I look at the flowers and am happy to pick up my camera to see what else I can see in these little microcosms of the life cycle. It brings me joy to see the beauty of all phases of their lives, even in their fading and eventual death.

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly our whole life would change.

   – Buddha

I want to find beauty in the fading, wrinkling, slowly dying phase because as an aging human I too will fade, wrinkle and die some day.

Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.

   — Georgia O’Keeffe

I keep learning more and more about photography through practicing on the same patient subjects day after day. And I keep looking more deeply and in different ways, attempting to see and portray the essence of these living beacons of light.

May you walk in beauty.