A lot of the photography jobs I get are referrals from colleagues in the industry and this particular client, an elderly fellow who loved his garden, was one such recommendation.
I rang the doorbell and eventually a small, crooked man by the name of Hubert greeted me at the door of his tiny 2 bedroom apartment. He had just finished preparing his oven baked chicken breast for lunch and was letting it cool as he showed me the artwork around his house. It didn't take long to see all 5 or 6 small painted artworks on his walls before we went to the small courtyard at the back of his house. His pride and joy were his daisies. They brought him so much joy every day when he wakes up and looks out the window. He wanted to have them photographed and framed so it would increase the value of his house when he put it on the market so he could travel around Europe. I suggested a more artful approach to producing a picture of his daisies rather than just a simple snap; I wanted to capture the life cycle and photograph them separately on a black background. He hadn't thought about that and was hesitant at first but eventually trusted my skill and creativity. I collected three flower specimens that represented the start of the flower's life, brought them back to the studio and using a long exposure light painting method, I utilised the torch on my iPhone to light paint each individual specimen. Then with Photoshop, I combined and blended each of those images together, multiplied them and kept on going until finally this piece happened. Hubert opted for a more simple version of the flowers where it was just simply the 3 stages of the flower coming to life, but it was the daisy wheel that won Silver Distinctions at both the state AIPP awards as well as the nationals.
