“She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her… I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. The flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her…”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince.

I am learning how to love her.

These past few days, I’ve started to focus on floral photo compositions, the ways in which flowers find one another and form their own small and beautiful communities.   They always seem to grow towards one another, even sometimes hugging and posing. I always feel as if they know what I want. and are brazen about it.

Composition – the ability to see the whole photo, not just one thing – is something I always work on. It’s central to my idea of photography. I think if I have a talent for picture-taking, it’s there.

As my garden bed grows – mine are always chaotic and on top of one another; I’ve noticed how they find each other, and each flower becomes part of a community, something I see as a gathering, not a solitary thing. They are always trying to tell me something.

So I set out today to take some composition photos that draw in an environment, different color schemes, and quite often the other flowers. They always seem to find each other.

I spend a lot of time out with my flowers, and I am learning that flowers speak to me and speak to one another, grow towards each other, and form small and beautiful communities of their own, perhaps for protection or company.

Most flower photos that I see are about one flower. I like to capture more than one, but sometimes the single flower forms a shape and color that makes me stop and wonder.

As a photographer, I try to capture not only the flower but the flowers around them and the communities they form if I look closely and regularly. The communities stand out. The flowers form boundaries around one another and grow inward and towards the center.

 

 

This is a new community of tall flowers growing up in and around one another. I’m always thinking of arranging the different elements into a cohesive whole. I think I was always pretty good at composition, but I laced the technical skills necessary to take a good photograph. At the core, photography is a technical process as well as an emotional one.

I had to learn more about that to get better.

Composition is critical: Photo composition is how a photographer arranges visual elements within their frame. “It’s a pleasing organization of objects within your rectangle,” says photographer Adam Long. Putting subjects or scenes inside that space may sound easy, yet it’s anything but. Composition in your shots can often be difficult and is always important. “Everything can seem perfect: lighting, location, wardrobe, styling, whatever,” says photographer Grace Rivera. “But if your composition is off, that’s a deal breaker.”

 

This Canna Lily has a lot of classic beauty and dignity. it seems very happy to be here. And almost arrogantly proud for a newcomer.

I’ve never known the name of these flowers, but I love their spirit, and they clearly thrive on community. We can learn a lot from flowers. I am.

Maria brought me these new flowers today, called Cottage Bronze and Cottage Yellow, and a Latin name I wouldn’t even try to remember. The flowers feel just like paper.

The new yellow Canna Lily seemed to be showing off for me, teasing me to take her portrait. It just took a day for it to bloom.

I am lining up tall annuals in the garden behind the poppies. It is deliberately chaotic but almost always beautiful.

I got another new flower to replace some of the storm-damaged ones. This one reaches up to the sky, called a Hummingbird Mint ‘Bolero.”