Calla Lily, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

Early in 2009 Hannah Thiem interviewed me for Photo.net. At the conclusion of the interview, I posed a challenge for Photo.net members: “Photograph a flower in a unique way—in a way that nobody’s seen before. Take a month to dive in to photographing a flower in an unusual creative way.”

The results are in, and they are a stunning and diverse group of photos. Congratulations to the winners, and to everyone who submitted work to what has become a fine gallery of unusual flower photos.

Here are my comments about the photos submitted for this “assignment”:

I was very pleased and delighted by the quality of submissions to this assignment. There were so many good choices that selection was difficult. I’ve selected S.J. Luke’s “Coming Up for Air” for its imaginative originality (no, I’ve never seen a flower like that before!), Christa Binder’s “Untitled” for its clarity of color and form, and the overall winner, Martha Weintraub’s “Flower Dancer” for its grace, poetry, originality, and power of execution.

Some more notes: this was an assignment, so while many of the photos submitted from files are brilliant and remarkable images, they don’t meet the terms of the assignment, and were not considered in the final selection. It’s important as photographers to be able to follow the dictates of an assignment even when conditions seem adverse (e.g., flower photography in winter). Art directors I’ve worked with have told me that the ability to follow directions is very important to them.

Some honorable mentions: In the assignment photos, I particularly liked (in no particular order): Tracy Hanby’s “Tulips”, Mark Onat’s “Cactus Flower”, and Linda Veit’s “Wild Daisy”.

If there were a humor category, two images would surely have won. They are Jacobin Pigeon’s very funny ‘brella blossom” and Nandita Subbarao’s “Ant on Flower—fossil effect” (the latter is a great use of Photoshop filters).

Among the stock images submitted to the assignment, I think Thomas Marino’s “Lotus Seeds”, Bill d’s “Dazzling Dandelion”, and Marek Pleszczynski’s “Frosted” are particularly wonderful.

Thanks to everyone who submitted photos to this assignment. There’s a great deal of originality, beauty, and playfulness in the photos, and much to be learned by looking through the submissions.

Purple Flower Scan, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

This is another flatbed scan, this time of a very small purple flower.

Related image: Purple Flower Dance.

White Camellia, photo by Harold Davis. View this image larger.

When I saw this white camellia blossom with its complex and transparent shapes, I knew that I needed to photograph it.

But an image that is mostly black and white but is rendered in color needs to be lit carefully. I used several small LED lights to backlight the flower, along with some more subdued general lighting from either side.

Even so, the center of the flower was too dark (because it was not as transparent as the petals), and I had to build up the luminous feeling in Photoshop.

Related image: White Hellebore.

[Nikon D300, Zeiss 100mm f/2.5 Macro lens, ISO 100 and f/22, tripod mounted: two exposures, one at 1.3 seconds, the other at 0.5 seconds.]