"Raindrops on Iris"

Hello Everyone!

Spring has been unusually rainy here in Connecticut. It wasn't just "April showers bring May flowers" but also "May showers ruin those flowers!"

I've noticed, in the last several years, that I am drawn to flowers that surrounded my parents' home when I was growing up. There, we had more iris than anything else -- and most of them had purple in them if they weren't completely one shade of purple or another. I loved them as a child and I appreciate them even more as a senior adult.

Lately I have been asking myself the general question of why am I so attracted to shooting flowers? Unlike the well known flower photographer, Kathleen Clemons, (who just happens to live in my beloved home State of Maine!), I don't start out to make portraits of the flowers I shoot.

Well, of course, I am attracted to flowers because of their natural beauty, but it is more than that. The blooms I shoot are at the height of their lives! They are, in Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, self-actualized. They are all they possibly can be at that point.

Yet there is more. Flowers attract me also because they imply the cycle of life. I have long thought about shooting flowers in the various states of their decay -- which would much more clearly demonstrate my interest in that part of reality, too. Will I do it? I am not yet sure.

While I try to figure that out, I invite you to enjoy the raindrop covered purple iris below. Be sure to click on the image to see its detail more clearly.

Raindrops on Iris

For more images, be sure to visit my website: jeanhendersonart.com

Please share this post with 2 friends who might appreciate my work. Many thanks for doing so!

My Main Artistic Goal

Even more than selling prints, my main artistic goal is to be a role model for other mental health clients (I have bipolar disorder) and their families. Why? Because, first of all, NO ONE ever told me I could get substantially better; second of all, because it was when I was able to reclaim my passion for photography that I rapidly improved. But that was not before a decade of severe depression had played itself out in my life and that of my family.

Just recently, I have added to my Flickr.com page over 100 shareable images made since 2009 click here to view. That was the year that photography again "clicked" for me. Through the first few images that excited me and told me I still "had it", I taught myself first Photoshop and, a bit later, the Lightroom software. Not to get crazy with changing the captured images, but more to enhance them to display what I had felt at the time of capture. Just as I used to do in the wet darkroom I first learned in.

For instance, take this shot of Red Rock Canyon:

I had only been in the prevalent browns of the Southwest for about 24 hours when my friend took me to view Red Rock Canyon just outside Las Vegas. The afternoon before I questioned whether my New England soul was going to survive the planned week amidst the lack of the varied colors I was so comfortable with. Then we drove upon this view and my soul sang! Color at last!!! I knew I would make it through the week then.

In learning to process this image to convey that feeling, I might have brought more red to the mountains than actually exists while, at the same time, preserving the blandness of the brown sand with just patches of vegetation. But the sky was really that blue with clouds so differently formed than those in New England. They almost seemed like angel wings up there.

My message: for those who are afflicted with affective disorders, ever so slowly reclaim an old passion or find a new one!