Brenda Landrum

Sometimes you just need to see someone else’s perspective to get you to look at something very familiar to you differently. That is exactly what Jaime Brandel did for me. She posted a beautiful image of an allium bud just starting to emerge and I gasped, then took a mental note to pay attention my Serendipity Alliums. The buds have just been coming up and had been closed tight for the last week or two so as I do my morning garden walk I have been watching. 

My husband and I have been spending our weekends completely redoing our garden drip system. It’s not something we really wanted to do this summer but it was either me hand water everything all summer long, or get our hands dirty and get the piping and valves redone. On Saturday as we were out early in the cool of the morning, I noticed the alliums were starting to peek out of their little cocoons. I couldn’t stop helping my husband so as I would pass by my camera on the kitchen island I would prepare it for a free moment when we had to wait for pipe cement to cure. 

I was slightly excited about the images and did some fairly quick editing to them that day so I could share online. The first image below is the initial editing I had done but when I was able to revisit I knew it wasn’t quite right. It felt like it needed more depth and saturation so I started to make adjustments by darkening the background and bringing the highlights down. This also helped saturate the tiny purple flowers and make them pop. Now it felt right and I used this as a guide for the other images. 

I’m quite pleased with the images below and the different variations of buds emerging. I’m also thankful that Jaime posted her image because it inspired me to not just walk by these in their very early stage and to really look at how they start to open up. I love tiny details like this and I love studying the stages of blooms so how I never noticed this before is kind of funny to me. I also love that tiny tiny little bug that flew in and posed for his close up right before I pressed the shutter button. 

I didn’t stop there. I love color and I think color represents blooms perfectly but I also love the way black and white sets more of a mood. It draws attention to other details when you are not focused on the color of something. Above, the purple is what draws attention first. In black and white what catches my eye is the stems and paper like texture of their enclosure. The form and movement of the stems stand out to me more. It also highlights the thin edges of each petal all tightly closed. I just might prefer the black and whites over the color images. I would love to know how they differ for you and which you are drawn to more! 

Thank you again to Jaime for inspiring me to take these photos. I really enjoy her work and highly recommend you subscribe to her. The next step for me with these images is to print them. I’ll start with 4×6 prints to test to see which one’s will do well larger and go from there. 

Thank you for reading today! I appreciate the support and encouragement by being interested in the images and stories behind them. 

B.