Human Flower Project

Well, those are interesting musings. Osborn’s winning scan is indeed lovely. But I thought the way you characterized scanned “photos”—as a wondrous magic trick—was telling. Then again, maybe all art is magic of a sort.

Thanks also for the shout-out.

Before anyone says that scans can’t be art should first try it some.  It’s one of those ‘a minute to learn, a lifetime to master’ techniques.  Just getting everything arranged in a pleasing way (much less an artistic way) is easier said than done.

I think scanning is similar to photography or arranging flowers.  Anyone can shoot a pretty picture or put some flowers in a vase.  Through practice, some folks get technically adept.  But only a few talented people can really claim that their photos or arrangements are art.

I remember taking a photography class in the art department during my senior year in college, venturing from the safety of my science curriculum.  I already knew how to operate a 35-mm camera, and developing film and making prints was a heckuva lot easier than organic chemistry lab.  For the first six weeks when we shared our portfolios, my prints were some of the best in the class.

Then once the art majors got the hang of the technique, they flew past me.  I have a serious ceiling on my artistic efforts, no matter the media.  So scanning will likely remain a fun pastime for me. But I look forward to seeing some great art from others using this media.

I guess the judge liked kitsch. The overblown color and manipulations in PhotoShop are way too tacky for my taste. See some of de Heem’s paintings in comparison.
http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/
html/h/heem/jan/index.html

Craig of Ellis Hollow stated it well, in that it’s easy to get impressive results immediately but will take some effort to use the medium to create art.

Many thanks, Pam, Craig, Ki,

For your photos, remarks, and links. Have you seen Portia Munson’s work?

http://humanflowerproject.com/index.php/weblog/comments/portia_munson/

Craig, the story of your photography class is wonderful. Many thanks for passing it along here.

I’ll hope to keep up with y’all’s photography experiments - scanner-ized and otherwise.

Using scans as a scientific recording tool is interesting to me, but as I told Craig in an email, cutting the flowers to bring them in makes the technique seem like an embalming process, leaving a denuded garden behind.

I wonder if it would have a different feeling if done with a portable scanner, carried out to the garden in the evening, and the scan was made while the flowers lived and thrived? Is such a thing technically possible?

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

Dear Annie,

Is the black background part of what’s funereal? The fact that the flower stems aren’t in water? (most still life paintings involve a vase and, I presume, liquid)

Love your idea about the plein air scan. I have a long extension cord. Just say the word!

J.

I hate cutting flowers, too.  Probably because I’m not a cut-flower person.  (Elly’s allergic.)  I’ll leave flowers that are one-of-a-kind in the garden.  But when I go out for my once-a-month scan, I come back with a big mixing bowl (or several) full of flowers, and when I go back out I can’t tell. 

If you don’t like the black, you can use a white background.  Just use a piece of paper or a pillow case or similar on top after you’ve made your arrangement.

There’s a good how-to here:  http://www.photo-vinc.com/articles/Flatbedscanner/Flatbedscanner.html

I also agree with Ellis Hollow… it was easy to scan a flower and get an acceptable result once a suitable covering was found. But to make a piece of art would take time and patience and practice of the technique, plus better photo editing software. 

However, I’m also not thrilled with the black background and wonder how other alternatives would look.

I read the brief article on the Toledo Blade site, and it doesn’t say it was scanned. It says digital photo collage. What does that mean? He took several photos with a digital camera and photoshopped them together? Or does it say elsewhere that he scanned them, and I just missed that? It does look scanned, I’ll grant you that—but is it?

Dear Kathy and all,

Thanks for the information, inquiry, and commentary.

And Kathy, thanks for catching this “digital flower collage” which I, eyeballing the images, translated into photo scanning. I believe I was wrong in calling these scans, and have found this short explanation of process that seems to have been written by Glenn Osborn himself:

“A distinctive aspect of the photography is that all of it was done in natural light-in sunlight, as opposed to the studio. For that reason, the flowers are all warm and glowing rather than sterile and harsh. At the same time, each photograph has been Zinnia painstakingly ‘re-imagined’ by means of computer technology: the backgrounds are removed and rendered in rich black; the leaves and stems, when shown at all, are muted to become framing elements. The emphasis is on the blossoms themselves.”

See http://www.handsonwebsites.com/100blossoms/

So, it seems, scanned - no

but PhotoShopped, as per Ki’s comment, apparently - yes, yes

The word “ART” is controversial, and, I think, easy to misuse. There is a difference between “Art” with a capital A - which right now tends to be conteompoary art that is written about critically in art magazines and journals, and is considered to pose a problem or query that provokes thought and discussion - and “Craft”, which is hand made, personal, decorative, and aesthetically motivated first and foremost. In between the two tends to be “art” (small a intentional), where most creative work lives, not making big cultural splashes or statements, but happily occupying places on home and office walls. I think these “flower scans” or “digital bouquet” don’t become art until they give us something to respond to other than how pretty they are ... until then, they are just that - pretty, decorative things most people will like - why not?

Sorry, I just caught up with this while goggling myself. (Sounds a little obscene, eh, but it’s interesting; that’s how I found this column). To answer some questions above:

The image shown at top is part of several ongoing projects I’m developing in the medium of photocomposition. That process involves a series of steps that begin with taking the original flower photographs that are the basis of my compositions. Shooting primarily in the gardens of the 577 Foundation near my home in Perrysburg, I’ve accumulated over 3,000 photographs of flowers.

The digital composition process requires removing from each flower photograph all but the “essential” elements of the picture, usually just the blossom itself but sometimes including stems and leaves. Individual flowers are then used to create a montage, on the computer, which involves further manipulation of the images.

My primary criterion for a composition are color and shape of the flowers. The images are ‘unreal’ in that I pay no regard to such issues as the relative size of the blossoms, the season of their blooming or the location of their growth. What’s important to me is the compositional concept: the compatible arrangement of form and color into the final image.

To see a great many more photocompositions using flowers, please visit my website:

http://www.handsonwebsites.com