Natures Jewels

A collection of exquisitely dried tulip and iris petals, photographed on a velum background. As the petals dried they metamorphosed into fascinating and beautiful shapes making them ideal subject matter for a series of photographs.

The shoot was quite complex. First of all the petals were extremely small and like all petals by their very nature, delicate. However, this is magnified to a greater degree when they are dried, if not handled with the greatest care they will simply crumble to dust. Another issue is the lightness of dried petals, once the water content has evaporated the petals become almost weightless, placing them into sets and making sure they don’t move during shooting was a very exacting procedure. We had become very attached to these little jewels of nature and wanted to keep each one intake, so we weren’t able to glue them down and re-touch out in post-pro, as that would have caused damaged.

Although the shoot took place over 20 years ago we still have each petal. As time has passed their colours have changed and they’ve dried and shrunk even further, but in essence they've remained as fascinating and beautiful as ever.