Deconstructing an Alpine Meadow
Deconstructing an Alpine Meadow
This week I’ll be sharing a little photographic project that came about on a rainy Mother’s Day earlier this year. It ended up being a fun family outing too!
It’s Mother’s Day.
It’s raining.
Which isn’t abnormal weather where we live, in the Swiss mountains, for this time of year.
Everyone has a bit of cabin fever.
Your a photographer (or trying to be as someone with family responsibilities as well) who has had this particular project in the back of your mind for a while, thinking of how to approach it.
How to make it happen?
Then, out of nowhere, inspiration strikes like a lightning bolt: let’s make it a fun family excursion!
So that’s what we did.
You see, our son loves to collect things from nature.
Sometimes that means flowers (to please mom). Sometimes that means snails (to scare mom). Sometimes that means dog poop (to amuse himself).
But this time, I was going to use his hobby to my (photographic) advantage.
After pitching the project for late afternoon, when we had a break in the rainy weather, we headed up the side of the valley from our house a little way to the meadow I had passed on many a run - and eyed for this project.
The goal:
To collect as many of the unique flowers / grasses / plants that make up the meadow as possible.
Then bring them home and photograph them in a way as to highlight their beautiful uniqueness.
Why?
Well, besides serving as the cabin fever cure mentioned above, from a photographic / visual point of view: I found it intriguing.
That’s one of the secret super powers of photography: A license to be curious and explore things.
And it worked surprisingly well.
We spent a good amount of time collecting specimens.
Mom was happy because we got out, our son was happy because he got to play in nature after being couped up inside most of the day, and I was happy because I was making a photographic project happen.
Once we got home light was fading fast, and I had to accelerate my plan to photograph the collected specimens as I envisioned (see image above).
Fortunately I could manage it just in time (ok ok, a little late) for dinner.
I wish I could say this was a highly professional, technically challenging and sophisticated photoshoot that required an entire studio team.
But it wasn’t.
At least not in the above sense.
It was indeed highly technical in that I had to know my stuff to make the images above with a limited amount of time and gear.
In other words: I had to know the language of light.
No, I’m sorry, I mean: the language of love (just in case my wife is reading this).
One thing I know, however, is:
I’ll never look at one of these meadows the same after exploring it - visually through photography - from up close.
Do you have any projects on the back burner that you would like make happen?
What are the challenges?
Simply hit reply and let me know / comment below.
PS - next week I’ll share the behind the scenes (BTS) of how I photographed the images from this week’s post (no artificial lighting, no tripod, using only stuff that was lying around the house, and no Photoshop!)
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Until next time ✌🏽.
Cornelius
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