At first I had some doubts about flowers being a suitable subject for art. But then I thought, “Hey, if flowers were good enough for Georgia O’Keefe and Robert Mapplethorpe, they’re good enough for me.”
If you were to put a gun to my head, I could probably think hard about my photographs, and come up with some claptrap about the mystery and sanctity of nature, and the power of the moment when the puzzled viewer realizes the true nature of what he or she is looking at. Luckily, you’re not carrying a firearm. You’re not, are you?
I’ve always loved artwork on a very big scale, and I experimented with having my pictures printed on unusual materials like vinyl – this by the advertising printer on the Warner Brothers studio lot that makes building-sized posters. I was contemplating ways to arrange these to make an immersive, walk-in experience when I discovered Second Life. My first show was an in-world version of what I had envisioned for the real world, but the FlowerBall displayed here was conceived to take advantage of what is possible in SL, while still being within the realm of possibility given my limited building skills. The experience may not be exactly like being a bee in a flower…but it’s not too far off.
FlowerBall Collaborators
A Second Life resident since 2005, Desdemona Enfield, in her more serious moments, studies the Zen of Scripting and occasionally dabbles in building. She’s highly verbal and will scroll everyone off the screen when given an opportunity. In real life, the daydream that comes closest to her vocation would include a checkered history in computer graphics, medical imaging, data protocols and embedded systems, plus a tad of physics and mathematics.
AldoManutio Abruzzo is a hugely popular improvisational musician who performs frequently in Second Life. More information and a performance schedule may be found at his web site at: http://usrslashsbin.angrek.com/
Photographic Technique
My technique involves the scientific approach of jamming the lens into the flower and tripping the shutter. Oh, alright….a little more than that. I use a good tripod, a camera with a LCD screen that swivels (good for unusual camera positions,) and sometimes diffusers or reflectors – but the light is all natural. The images you see in my 2-d photography have not been altered with Photoshop; that’s the picture as it came right out of the camera.
Bio
I was born in Wisconsin, where I developed the love of deep-fried cheese curds and bratwurst which continues to enrich my life to this day. Later, my family moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Later still, I went off to college at UC San Diego, then moved to Los Angeles to Make Movies.
I quickly discovered that working on movie shoots is both grueling and boring, and ended up as a videotape editor. From there it was a gradual descent to my present position of Television Promotion Writer/Producer/Editor.
As far as photography goes, when I was in high school and college, I was rarely seen without a 35mm camera around my neck. My interest waned over the years, only to wax again in the last few years with the advent of digital photography. When I learned that my spiffy new Nikon could focus as close as 3/4″, I was off to the races.
My hero is Edward Weston.
