Botanical Collage

Posted on by jostephen

This weekend I wanted to go out and hunt for frog orchids on the downs, but my little car had other plans, flashing scary warning lights at me, so I found myself at home in the village this weekend. As this week’s challenge for #wilfdlflowerhour (my favourite Twitter event every Sunday at 8-9pm) I went out to photograph some grasses from the rather overgrown pavement and curb outside and my wild front garden for the challenge. One thing led to another and I ended up getting the lightpad out, not a toy I often play with, collecting a few plants and getting carried away. The images below are the result of Saturday night’s digital doodling.

jo stephen photography
Spring flowers – [ressed bluebells, cowslips and bugle I found in a flower press.

I set up a tripod over the lightpad indoors, with no additional light and captured some high key images of the flowers and grasses using my Olympus OM-D EM10 miii and a with 45mm lens. I’ve then layered them over each other, adding texture layers and a few filters to the flowers to create these digital collages (for want of a better word). I hope you like them.

jo stephen photography
fowers and grasses from my front garden and the curb outside

You can see the rest of this series (which may well grow & evolve) in it’s own gallery here and all the images are available as blank cards if you’d like one.

jo stephen photography
Bluebells & spring flowers found in an old flower press

Thanks, Jo x

16 thoughts on “Botanical Collage”

  1. Hi Jo.
    These are absolutely fantastic, so we’ll put together. They’d look great as wallpaper, very William Morris!
    Wendy

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  2. A change in style from you Jo but no less awesome. I always find your work inspiring and uplifting. Thank you for sharing. Susan

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  5. Hi Jo – these are absolutely gorgeous images! When you say you applied a filter in the first image- May I ask what that means? I’m just getting into flower photography and live following hour images – very inspiring!

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    1. There’s a filter gallery in Photoshop which has a selection of pre made filters, I don’t use them often and usually at a low opacity when I do but they can be fun to play with.

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  6. These are beautiful! I don’t have a flower press but I do press flowers between a couple of glass panes – often to use in making cyanotypes (which you inspired me to learn how to do)! So now I have new inspiration from you – thank you so so much for sharing 😍. I do love and appreciate your work. Judith

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    1. Thanks so much, I saw a post somewhere about ironing flowers to press them which looked like an interesting technique.

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