21 Jan The Art of Flowers
Started working with a new client the other week, Tiare Floral Design. A floral designer local here to Tacoma. Doesn’t sound too exciting, eh? Yeah, well he’s not exactly the kinda guy who is taking calls at flowers-r-us. When you think of a floral arrangement I can guarantee you it’s not anything close to what Tomasi, the designer, is creating. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing his work in person, and it’s not something you’ll find the Safeway florist slapping together.
Tomasi approached me and said he really liked my work, I said the same, and we were booking shoots that day. I’d never shot flowers specifically, but after seeing Tom’s work, I was very excited to take a shot at it. We talked about present and future projects. The most interesting aspect of our future work coming down the road for me is the mixture of portraiture and the floral design. So there will be many posts coming at you in the months to come with many variations besides just flowers on a pedestal.
Tomasi really wanted to shoot at the Tacoma Library for our first go. He’d always like the idea of shooting his flowers with books. We got in before opening hours and were on a time crunch. There is a glass pedestal in the entryway of the library specifically in place for work Tomasi displays on a regular basis. Really cool pedestal, but awful background to work with. Glass and metallic surfaces filled the background, complete with awkward staircase slanting through the width of my framing. I gave the background a shot, trying to work some creative lighting into it. As you can see below, it was… not on par with the floral work.
It really didn’t work, so I took complete control of the environment with a gradient light that faded to darkness. A pure black background that made the work pop. The only downfall to the lighting setup that I was force to use grid-spotted hard light, a type that would prevent light from spilling all over the room and into the background. Umbrellas and softboxes, tools I would love to use to capture these floral designs perfectly, filling in detail, etc (reasons that are meant for another post), were a no-go. That’s the thing about location shoots, you have to be fluid and work problems in realtime, you can’t say timeout and mull it over until you are comfortable with what’s been thrown at you. Anywho… not ideal lighting, but the best solution for the situation.
We shot three pieces, I composed them all the same on the pedestal with the same lighting.
This floral art, as you can see, is something special. Future shoots, cooler locations, incorporating models… very fun stuff in the chute. Stay tuned!
This is a quick post, and I apologize. A lot in the works, trying to get the workshops complete for you guys who have been asking about them, and making other shoots and projects with clients.