The Season For Peonies

Every spring I look forward to photographing peonies in a still life. This year I decided to do something different. I attended a Peony Floral Class at The London Plane with my sweet friend, Kristen, who is also an avid photographer. It was nice to share the mutual understanding of needing to photograph everything in sight. 

There was a plethora of peonies in different colors and phases in bloom to choose from. We learned how to make a floral arrangement. First starting with a color theme, building a foundation with foliage, using peonies as the main flower and then adding accent flowers. Sounds easy enough but much harder to do and even harder to achieve the perfectly imperfect wild look. 

I forgot to bring my camera with me and ended up using my iPhone. I took a lot more photos that I wanted to share here however I lost them all while trying to backup my photos. I was able to salvage this photo I sent to my sisters.

Photographing Peonies

2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017

Lately

For the past six months I've been tweaking my lifestyle and schedule to build more efficiency into my day. I will have to say this does not make me a very fun person to be around. With time, my goals continue to be aggressive however my energy is limited. If I'm not discipline with my day, it's much easier to get distracted or burnt out. Here are ten things I'm currently doing that's keeping me on top of my game:

1. Getting at least eight hours of sleep every night.
2. Having a consistent morning routine: gratitude journal, mediate, yoga sculpt and then my day begins. 
3. Understanding what foods work well with my body and fueling it with that.
4. Drinking a ton of water. 
5. Thought downloads. 
6. Doing one thing every day that gets me closer to my goal / dream. The secret of your success is found in what you do daily; I read that once on Pinterest. 
7. Blocking hours at a time on my calendar for the top three things I want to accomplish and giving myself a break in between.
8. No alcohol. Nope, not even wine. And I also gave up coffee. See #2 and #3.
9. Making a handful of commitments, scheduling it into my calendar and making it nonnegotiable. At the end of the week I do a quick review to see what worked, what didn't and make adjustments for the upcoming week. 
10. Taking a social media detox. This is my biggest distraction and time killer. If I need a mental break I simply read a book; something I always say I never have enough time for. My books are loaded on my phone so they're easily accessible. 

Photographs inspired by Vilhelm Hammershøi's painting,“Woman Seen from the Back” (1888). 

Never Ending Love Affair with Peonies

This past spring was the forth consecutive year I’ve photographed peonies. During that time, I was greeted by darkness when I returned home from work, making it hard to squeeze time to photographing in natural light. My beau suggested we invest in studio lighting to help with my dilemma; he could also use the lighting for when he's painting and so we did.

So far artificial light is proving to be a beast (I really should look into attending a workshop on this subject). Lately, I’ve been really drawn to direct light. I love it for so many reasons but particularly for the moodiness, drama and beautiful shadows it creates. This photoshoot was inspired by the very talented Gentl and Hyers’s Botanicals found as a part their portfolio. I came across their work through Alice Gao, another amazing photographer I admire. I love the way they all use light in their photographs and I often spent time looking at their work, especially still-life, to study the lighting.

For about a week, I got to enjoy a dozen of peonies sitting in my living room. Everyday I'd watched them unfold petal by petal opening up as they do that so well in the warmth of the apartment. When they fully bloomed, I pulled them part to photograph.










Peonies // Photography Notes

Direct light, from the source of artificial light in this case, was difficult. My challenge being the ability to balance providing sufficient light all around while trying not to blow the exposure on the areas that were in the direct light. It can be harsh shooting with direct light and my goal was to achieve the perfect balance between the two.

I also played around with diffused light and found that it added a softness to my photographs which I equally loved (image on the right) but I can't decide if that's still considered direct lighting?

All technicality aside, I am perfectly happy photographing peonies all day; they are just so beautiful!

Past Photoshoots with Peonies:

 2013 // On Black and White Film 

2014 // On Digital 

2015 // Dried Up Peonies

Currently Brewing Tea

Over the last few years I've been obsessed with tea. Don't get me wrong, I still need my cup of coffee in the morning to jumpstart my day but my afternoons are spent consuming tea. My love and appreciation for tea started after a visit to a little tea shop in Sanxia District which is a few hours outside of Taipei. The tea leaves are delivered to the shop fresh from the tea mountain regions several times a week and in this little shop is where I did my very first tea tasting. 

The kind woman pouring us tea had so much knowledge about all of the different types of tea and their differences in taste. She spent her entire life learning about tea and perfecting the way to care for it, brew, and serve it which made me feel ridiculous at my need for perfection on my third try at every thing new I attempt. However since then, every time I try something new that may be challenging I am reminded of this kind woman and I give myself some grace. 

It was such a disappointment I didn't speak any Mandarin because I couldn't understand a thing this woman was sharing with us. Thankfully I was with my beau and his family and had his dad to translated but it wasn't the same as hearing her exact use of words to describe the art of brewing tea as we were experiencing it. After we picked our choice of tea; me: Jasmine, my beau: Oolong she taught us how to prepare tea. First, place your tea leaves in a pot and pour boiled water over the tea leaves just enough to get them all wet. Then lightly swirl it around for about 10 seconds and dump the water. Finally, pour boiling water to fill the tea pot and then you're ready to pour for drinking. 

This shoot was done using Oolong tea and a ceramic tea set from Taiwan. 

Midnight Flower Studies

Post production is my least favorite part of the photography workflow which is also my primary excuse for not blogging as much as I would like. When I shoot, I usually don't have the end in mind. I just shoot what I see and feel within the moment. These roses were taken awhile back. I picked them apart to photograph right before I was going to throw them out. They were bright orange, vibrant and lush. I used the cushion to my leather couch as a backdrop (hey, you gotta get creative with what you've got right?). At the time I wanted to capture those details that made up how bright and beautiful these rose were but once I was in post production I couldn't do it justice so I dismissed them completely.

I was cleaning up my files tonight when I found them. I still think the way I tried editing them before wasn't the best so I started playing with it again. Now I think I have it down to a look that feels more... me. Of course the goal would be to work towards being able to execute my vision from the beginning to end... but what if that vision changes? It took me awhile to find what felt right, what felt like me and I guess that's why they say, 'it's the journey that counts.'

The Study of Light

I took a black and white photography class back in spring and as part of a homework assignment we were asked to focus on the lighting in our photographs. Of course I picked to study the light with my favorite subject: peonies. You can see a little behind the scenes in this Instagram photo.

In preparation of this shoot I bought the peonies a week prior which allowed them to fully bloom and open up; almost to the point of the petals beginning to turn into a darker color and dry up. For the background, I wanted to use something different from a traditional seamless white backdrop. I wanted to use something with a subtle texture to add another element the creation/movement of the lighting and settled on a cardboard box. I shot these both on black and white film and digital but wanted to share the digital versions.

I hope these peonies brighten up your Monday.

Have You Ever...

... wrote an entire blog post over the span of two hours and then decided last minute not to share it and delete it altogether? Welcome to the world of 'Am I really a blogger?'. Internet, now you have it why my blog is a continuous neglect and lack of updates.

Ugh... for now, here's some peonies to make me feel better. 

Hello September!

The beau and I just returned home from NYC. We had such a wonderful time and I can't wait to share our adventures through photographs here in the next few days.
For now, here are some photographs I took of pink roses dancing in the light during a beautiful August afternoon...

Peonies in Black and White

These are the last boutique of peonies I picked up from the market. Peonies are my favorite flowers and they are so beautiful but I think I love them more so for what they represent to me. Peonies are usually available in the spring and if you live in Seattle you can understand how long and gloomy the winters can be. When peonies floods the market, I feel like better days are yet to come with new beginnings, sunshine and warmer weather. 

Taken on Kodak Tri-X 400 film.

Beauty Has Grace

 

Irving Penn is one of the many photographers I love and his work influences me immensely. I received this beautiful boutique of flowers from my beau and one day at home I noticed how lovely the light was dancing across my living room. I wanted to capture my flowers in the same way that Irving Penn did in his book of flowers but with influences of his black and white photos of beautiful women in gowns.