A New Direction Begins!

Digital original

Late last year, ViewPoint Gallery moved to a new space; as part of the renovations, a new concrete floor was poured. After it was set, the gallery members held a celebratory get together in the new space. The next day, I arrived at the gallery to an interesting sight - over the evening, a carnation had fallen against a single-pane window, and been frozen within a sheet of ice (from the condensation due to the new concrete floor).

The image of that flower frozen in ice has stuck with me since then, and finally, almost 4 months later, I have decided to see if I can recreate the results, using Tupperware and a freezer.

Digital original

My first attempt at freezing flowers in ice went reasonably well - one of the three blocks of ice was completely clouded white - for some reason it was just a dull cloud of air bubbles...but the other two held flowers magically suspended in a surreal world of bubbles and light.

Digital original

In some ways this session created more questions that it answered; why did one of the three attempts fail, and was there a way to prevent it. How could I make the images work better (some of those I thought would be really strong just didn't translate into good photographs), and how could I generally push the technique further. I am intrigued, and will continue to work through these questions, in hope of gaining some control over the process.