About

A portfolio that looks at plants two photographs at a time.

Wildstem files flower photographs by what the plants are doing rather than by date or place. A single photograph shows one moment; a pair shows a difference worth writing down.

Plant names appear only where the photograph makes them clear. Everywhere else a plain description does the job, and a correction is always welcome.

A hillside covered in small yellow flowers rises beneath trees and a blue sky.

How a study is made

Choose a pair. Two photographs that share one question: a petal edge, a colour, what is left after flowering.
Set them side by side. Both at the same portrait crop, labelled Study A and Study B, so neither reads as the before or the after.
Write down what shows. A short table: the plant, or a plain description when the name is not certain, where it appears and what to look at.
File it in one band. In flower, At scale, Under glass or After bloom, by what the plants are doing in the photographs.

Small white seed heads stand among green grasses and dried stems.

The four bands

In flower

Single flowers seen close: petals, centres and the stems that carry them.

At scale

Whole slopes and fields, where colour becomes a surface and no single flower leads.

Under glass

Beds grown under cover, read as rows, blocks and repeated colour.

After bloom

What stays when the petals go: seed heads, pods and dry stems.

Photographs and type

The studies on this site are fictional demonstration writing. The photographs are by Bigul Malayi, suzchisum, wbadilla, Faisal Ahammad, Manjil Aryal and shirishpoudel07, from the WordPress Photo Directory under CC0. Type is Fraunces and Inter, under the SIL Open Font License.