Few flowers offer as much unabashed romance and luxurious elegance as peonies. Big blooms bursting with petals in shades of delicate pink and soft white appear briefly in early summer, filling the garden with an intoxicating fragrance.
Choosing to photograph peony flowers in a still life arrangement was my way of trying to capture the mood of the season and these special florals. Working in my small sunroom studio with natural light and a simple backdrop setup, I explored different vases and compositions.
In my first attempt I arranged the flowers in a geometric crystal vase illuminated in a narrow pool of sunlight against a dark background. I left the stems long to allow the opening buds the appearance of overflowing into the negative space around the sunlit centre of the frame. The contrast of the delicate flowers with the structural vase, their white petals bright against the darkness, creates a contemplative and quiet mood that is accented by refreshing splashes of colour in the green leaves and stems.
A bright yellow fluted vase offered a different interpretation with the full blooms and colourful container bringing the focus to the centre of the frame. Working again within a narrow shaft of sunlight I balanced the subject at the edge of the shadows to bring out the softer mood of the ruffled petals and cheerfully coloured vase. The depth of the darker background seems to push the peony flowers forward where they fill the frame with their naturally light and textural details.
These richly detailed images full of velvety contrast look especially beautiful printed on softly textured fine art papers. Find this peony still life photo and more limited edition floral art prints in my online print shop.
