10/16/2025
💭 Personal inspiration: I have always loved the look of whimsical painterly style art. It transports you to a different age of sophistication and elegance and often showcases the illusion of movement in a still subject. When I found that you can use ice to help achieve some of that painterly style texture without any digital manipulation I was addicted! In a time when there is so much “AI” or “fake” content, it is refreshing and extremely satisfying to create something REAL and tangible! Each flower turns out utterly unique. There is a lot of randomized experimental results when working with ice. It is completely unpredictable and many variables are entirely out of your control. Yet the moment I pulled this one out of the freezer and it started to frost up, I knew it was golden! The way the water pulled pigment from the blossom to “paint” the background is absolutely magical and 100% luck!
📸 Photography techniques: interestingly this is simply a quick iPhone shot- nothing fancy. Just a quick shot I took to show what I’m working on. The REAL photo with the actual camera is even better! The trick with this piece is freezing the flower in stages and leaving some of the flower and petals uncovered from the ice. The magic happens within the first 5-10 minutes after it is removed from the freezer and it begins to frost over. It doesn’t last long, as it warms up the frost melts and it loses a bit of the mystical effect.
🌷 Flower type: I found this sweet Dahlia at , a local pick your own flower farm. The season is coming to a close so it is getting harder to find these, but i was very fortunate that day. They had a few blossoms left. I loved the layers depth and variation of color on the petals. And when frozen it became even more pronounced.
☀️ Lighting conditions: I used natural light about 3pm in the afternoon in my front driveway. This was placed in the direct sunlight to give it the warmth. But I used a soft diffuser to reduce strong shadows and harsh glare.
