Ten (Temperate) Botanical Frames in Colour

Back in March 2024 I posted a piece about how great plants can look when photographed in black and white. Now this is despite the fact that I don’t embrace any particular ideology about black and white film, and most of my photography, including BD (Before Digital) has been in colour. So of course, the counter-argument to the one I made in that piece was already percolating through my brain even as I wrote it, and I’ve been circling around the idea ever since. Obviously, plants are a magnificent photographic subject in colour! Flowers are fundamentally about colour. Yes I know some photographers have made superlative images of lillies and magnolias in black and white, but yeah, doing that with all of them is kind of missing the point, IHMO. So… I actually have two stories on this theme. Today’s is ‘one I prepared earlier’ (i.e. from my BD archive) and the second will be from more recent, tropical material.

The images I’m presenting today were made in the early 2000s at an amazing event called Floriade, in the city many Australians love to hate, Canberra. I lived in Canberra for five years and I can tell you that it’s a terrific place to live, despite all the contempt directed at it by people who’ve never spent any time there. And Floriade is one of the many good reasons to visit the place, even if you don’t stay. It’s a spring flower festival that is dominated by northern hemisphere garden flowers, particularly tulips. Now Canberra also has a very impressive botanical garden, which of course features a wonderful selection of exquisite Australian flora, but if you want to feast your eyes on a veritable sea of exotic colour, you don’t want to miss Floriade.

The below images were made mostly with Fuji slide film (Velvia and Provia), shot with a Mamiya 6MF (using 50mm and 75mm lenses) and a Nikon F801S and a 60mm ‘Micro Nikkor’ lens. Floriade is located on the unceded lands of the Ngunnawal people (the name Canberra is a Ngunnawal word meaning ‘meeting place’).

Thanks for reading.

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