It was a simple act, just a man taking his children to get a photo for his small-town newspaper of a deer swimming across a lake in Central Minnesota. Little did he know that when he handed the small Polaroid print to his 9 year old son, he was igniting a flame in that child that would grow into a lifelong passion for the camera and the fascinating world it sees.

I started serious landscape photography in the mid-1970’s when I lived in Flagstaff, AZ. The beauty of the forest came to life as the light revealed the textures of both vista and petals, and I became fascinated with the play of light and shadow on whatever I turned to look at, whether or not camera was at hand.

This fascination with light continued when I moved to the Phoenix area, and I began to study intently other landscape photographers. I took what I was learning and used it to begin to explore the intensity of the desert light, where shadows are deep and the light of a sky that seems to have no boundaries to it, becomes a major dichotomy, simultaneously being both benefactor and detractor. 

In that same timeframe I was fortunate to have several of my images appear in Arizona Highways. These were images that on the one hand showed the softness of the early morning light on Weaver’s Needle in the Superstition Wilderness and in another one showed the effect of late afternoon light on a thunderhead and red-tinted shaft of rain that was both limitless in its intensity and still was able to sculpt delicate cloud canyons. Many years have passed, but the experience is not diminished in my mind to the slightest degree.

Why Flower Photography?

Few things in this life can be examined close-up and not be found lacking.

Not so with flowers. If anything, the beauty of the flower is magnified in the perception of the viewer when the details ARE examined. The perfect structure and shapes are revealed and caressed by the shaft of sunlight that finds its way through the maze of petals into the innermost parts of that creation.  In doing so, it reveals the hidden truth and beauty of that perfectly designed structure.

So how did a landscape photographer learn to see the beauty of the flower? Part of it was equipment: a macro lens on a really good camera. I could see the beauty in the details in a way that I couldn’t before, and I knew I could accurately capture that beauty on film or digital sensor.

The biggest draw to me, though, was that in the innermost, hidden part of the flower, I could see the same shapes as I had seen in the landscapes I photographed. I could look inside the canyons of the Bearded Iris and see the same shapes as I saw in the desert and the forest. I could look at the petals of a white orchid that glistened in the sunlight and see the sparkling snow on the gentle slopes of the mountains. I could see in the backlit rose petals the same subtle changes in light I saw when looking at rows of mountain ranges in the desert, backlit by the setting sun.

So it appears I have come full circle. I have gained the ability to see the vastness of the world contained in the secret places of the flower. 

Thank you for coming with me on this journey into the flower.

Bruce VanderHaar