The submerged garden photographs are about embracing shadows and ambiguity. Using whatever light there is available and working with the captured images to bring out a feeling or an atmosphere. It is also about allowing space to make associations, bring together ideas in the mind that can uncover a hidden reality in the twilight.
Influences
For sometime I’ve been fascinated by Fleur Olbey’s image series Fog and Velvet Black Editions . The quiet, painterly, stillness of the fog landscapes and the plant portraits offered a different way of using the camera. Rather than the ‘tack sharp’ images so beloved of photographic gear reviewers many of Olbey’s images inhabit an abstract visual space. A space that allows the viewer to engage emotionally with the subjects, even if it is sometimes hard to pinpoint what that emotion is.
The effect of contemplating Olbey’s work, especially the plant portraits, has loosened my own approach to macro plant and flower photography. Initially I kept to simple black or white backgrounds which produced quite stark, graphic images. Over time I began to experiment with different background colours, surfaces and lighting setups.
Why Twilight?
I became interested in the changes to colour and form that twilight brings to my garden. In that neither night or day period it feels like the garden is being submerged under a mysterious sea. Several people have commented that some of the photographs remind them of jelly fish and other underwater creatures.
Ice and other developments
I noticed that different ways of composing images suggested themselves. Flowers half hidden by leaves would not be my normal approach. Usually I’m focusing on clarity when making an image. However in the twilight the half hidden allows the mind to construct alternative narratives. By suggestion and hints other worlds just on the edge of vision become possiblities. Often I find these hints after making the image. Happy accidents such as those in the series of On Ice plant portraits I have made by freezing petals, whole flowers or leaves in water.
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Elise Naudé
1 Sep 2021Thank you for the link. Happy to say that it needs further investigation and interpretation on my side. You must never stop shooting and sharing, please. This is what I call honest photography.
mariusgrose
1 Sep 2021Thank you Elise for taking the time to look at my images. Your comments are so wonderfully supportive and I will carry on shooting. I post on twitter, Facebook and instagram.
Marius Grose
9 Feb 2022Hi there Elise,
Thought you might like to know I started a 365 days of photography Jan 1st. I post once a week on Sundays. Here is a link to last weeks images
https://photography.mariusgrose.co.uk/week-5-of-weird-photography/