For many years, I lived without love, color, or light. I lived without sex and connection. I’ve been thinking about why flowers and my pictures of them have come to hold so much meaning.

My floral photography is a journey for me, an exploration of color and light, and emotion.  Flowers are all about reproduction, their male and female parts working together to create color to attract mates and come together to produce life.

In this sense, they are sensual, sexual, and beautiful and evoke love and connection. That is the story of life. When I take a picture of flowers, I celebrate the return of love, life, color, and light to my life. I am putting some of the pieces together as I think about it.

The primary purpose of the flower is reproduction, not beauty. Beauty attracts a mate.

Since flowers are the plant’s reproductive organs, they mediate the joining of the sperm, contained within pollen, to the ovules — contained in the ovary. Pollination is the movement of pollen from the anthers to the stigma. They suggest the human process of reproduction, the essence of life.

The flower’s soul is the soul of life, at least when I look inside my camera. That’s what I see, and I can’t help but see the trajectory of my life looking back at me.

There are other, more pragmatic and practical reasons for flowers. Psychologists say that having flowers around the home and office improves people’s moods and eases depression and anxiety. So does love. So does sex.

This has undoubtedly been the case for me. They symbolize the loss and return of love in my life, in my life, and in the world around me.  Flowers and ornamental plants increase positive energy levels and help people feel calm, even relaxed. No wonder gardening is so important to so many people.

While flowers may add color to our tables or gardens, their purpose is more about function than form in nature. Flowers enable plants to reproduce, and their colors and shapes facilitate pollination, seed growth, and dispersal. Understanding the purpose of flowers can help you plan and choose the best flowers for my garden and my life. I see my life in that mirror.

When I look at flowers, I see color and light, of course, but I also see life itself looking back at me in the mirror. And I always see the love and the connection of one human being to another.

Flowers have several essential parts, all related to plant reproduction.

The sexual reproductive organs of the flower are the pistil, or female parts, and the stamen, or male characteristics. The pistil is typically bowling pin-shaped and consists of three parts — the stigma, style, and ovary. The stamen consists of the anther or pollen sac and a supporting filament. The petals, sepals, and nectar glands comprise the flower’s remainder.

I don’t need to detail human anatomy.

 

Since flowers are all about the reproduction of life, they are deceptively sensual and sexual. They permit is to see and smell the wonder of life without quite realizing it. Since my photography, I realized this day by day. It’s not just about pretty photographs for me. No wonder it is important to me; my photography is about this revelation.

I sometimes look at it this way. Flowers are about reproduction; no wonder they touch so many of our emotions.

Understanding the literal production of flowers is profound; I think my eye goes toward reproduction without realizing it. Flowers reflect our lives in ways I am only beginning to understand. I hope to write about it more. Thanks for coming along.