Ice Follies

Frozen flowers provide hours of creative play

Extra time means project time, and this week it was frozen flowers. Inspired by an image shared by a friend, I decided to try something new. A simple afternoon project extended over three days as new variations in the idea kept coming up.

a tulip waves hello from within its frozen tomb.

"Help me escape" cries the flower from within the block of ice.

Beautiful tulip frozen within a block of ice

preserved on ice, two colourful flowers look out from their icy prison

Beauty encapsulated, a tulip is frozen in an ice cylinder

For Photographers

When I saw an image of a frozen flower by fellow photographer Gail Gravelle, I decided to give it a try. Little did I know that I would be chained to my camera and computer for hours and days.

Variations occurred often. “What if …” became the norm as I froze the flowers in different sizes and shapes of containers, lit the flowers in different ways and even varied the amount of time the flowers were in the freezer.

The greatest tool in the process was the lightpad, a panel of LED light underneath the ice blocks. I also used focus stacking for many of the images. Post processing took more time than the actual photographing. Most were much more than a single exposure and the layers were masked so that selected portions of each layer could shine through.

Frozen flowers provide hours of creative play

For Photographers

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