My mother loves growing things. As Winter melts into Spring on the East Coast of the United States, her garden brings forth a variety of wild and hybrid flowers. Some of her favorites include the wide varieties and colors of her Iris collection.
Iris germanica | © 2012 David Allio
Last year, she shared a rhizome of a Bearded Iris Iris germanica. One year later, the member of the Iridaceae family has bloomed for the first time in my garden.
Now an Iris may be one of my mom’s favorite flowers, but I have never felt that it has been one of the best photo subjects. Maybe it has something to do with how that particular flower does not fit my compositional eye and the resulting photographic failures. Yet when it flowered, as a dutiful son, I felt compelled to share the emerging bloom – it would make my mom happy to see it growing.
After a few traditional still life images of the full flower, I began to explore other angles and compositions. Thanks to Surrealist influences and a Nikkor AF 60mm f/2.8D Micro lens on my Nikon D3 camera the resulting photo was satisfying, even though it may not be immediately recognizable as an Iris.
The exposure was made with a lens aperture of f/14 and a shutter speed at 1/250th of a second. A film speed of 1000 ISO was needed to hand-hold the camera with the available light through the overcast sky.
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