Photo Stories - Detritus of False Sunflower
Greetings once again! November is upon us, the year is winding down and the holidays are just around the corner. And I’m ready for it all, man. I’m sure I’ll talk about that in some future blog posts, especially as Christmas gets near, I just love all of that stuff. In the meantime, another photo story. This time it centers on the photograph “Detritus of False Sunflower”, which is my favorite image in my gallery. As of the time that I’m writing this I think of it as one of my masterworks. After this, you might be inclined to agree… or not, I don’t know it doesn’t seem like words are all that important anymore and certainly not as capable of changing a person’s mind as they used to be. Anyway, the story behind the image dabbles in the esoteric and borderline spiritual, themes of “feeling” and “guidance” and “trusting the muse” appear throughout. If that’s not your thing, I apologize, but that’s just how it goes. I don’t have the words to really express the process that takes place in the moments when creativity peaks, so I’ll just try and put it the best way I can and hope I don’t lose too many people along the way.
“Detritus” was made on September 14, 2023. I was in the midst of my table portrait series but had also been making a lot of still life work as well. Looking back on that time, from Summer ‘23 until Spring ‘24, and the sheer amount of creative output I managed, you could say that I was “locked in” and no one would argue. Anyway, the point is that my mind was open, prepared, ready for anytime inspiration would come. I wish it was always like that, but it just doesn’t work like that for me. Sometimes it all just shuts down and no matter what I try, nothing works. The fact that it happens like that has always reinforced my belief that there is more to creativity than we know, that it seems to be guided by something beyond our experience of the world. So yeah, at this time I was tuned in to whatever The Muse would send my way. The 14th of September was a beautiful late summer day, there was a crispness in the air that hinted at autumn’s imminence, but the sun was still warm. I was in the backyard, sitting in the grass and it was late morning. On the North side of the yard, growing through the fence from the neighbors side, there was a patch of false sunflower. I’m one of those people who still keeps a lawn and my neighbor at that time was not, so most everything over on that side was dead. But those false sunflower were crafty. They managed to survive and thrive off of my sprinkler water. I didn’t mind. I admired their perseverance, their sprit of survival and ingenuity. They also seemed to be a favorite of the local bee population, and so I let them stay, and if truth be told I might have even encouraged their growth. So anyway I’m sitting there in the yard, and I look over at them, and by this time they had begun to wither and dry up which caught my eye as I’d been photographing other dried botanicals periodically throughout that year. The way the light played across the petals, highlighting the textures and forms, set my mind ablaze with possibilities. I didn’t know exactly what was coming, but I felt that feeling, that whisper from somewhere else that says “it’s time”. So I cut probably 15-20 of them, the ones I thought had the most potential or immediate visual impact, and I took them inside to get to work.
By this time I had a really good workflow for this sort of image, so the setup didn’t take long. I set up my table - the same table used for all of my table portraits in The Portrait Series (which will continue in 2026 if anyone was curious) and assembled my kit for the day. As has been the case since 2021, I used my Canon EOS R5, and I’ll take another moment to say it’s my favorite camera of any that I have owned. Once I got it, I never really thought about new cameras again. Anyway since the flowers were small, between the size of a quarter and a half dollar, (sorry for my overseas friends who can’t quite grasp that, just think of one of your larger coins) I’d be using the Canon RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro Lens which has the ability to magnify images 1.4 times their size on the image sensor making them seem so much larger than life and allowing you to see more details up close than you can with your eyes or most normal lenses. I used this to great effect in my image of The Calder Creek Shell, a tiny, dime-sized shell rendered incredibly large. My light was a Westcott Lighting FJ400 strobe (with the FJ-X3 Wireless Controller) and man, those things last forever. I’ve had mine for years and they’re just so reliable. Anyway I had several lighting modifiers (softboxes) to choose from, but I knew I’d want the softest light possible, so I chose the Westcott Rapid Box 3x4’ which would allow me to mimic large window light but still maintain full control over the direction, spread, and intensity. Again I used the Canon BR-E1 Wireless Remote to trigger the camera. In developing this style, I found that using a blank black background served me best for subjects that were lighter than middle grey and in this case I simply used a black piece of foam core placed about three feet behind my subject. I also used a white piece of foam core as a reflector on the opposite side of my light to fill in some of the shadows. Since these photos would be using controlled lighting, I also used a Sekonic L-308X Light Meter. I know a lot of photographers these days don’t use light meters, and prefer to just chimp away and adjust the lights until they get the look they’re after, but you won’t catch me in the studio without one. Because the flowers were so small, and I had to make sure they would be held steady and facing the camera (a recurring problem in macro photography) this meant I needed a way to hold them in place and, thankfully I had just recently heard about the Adaptalux Macro Subject Holder which has become an essential part of my macro kit. Without it I couldn’t photograph my Calla Lilies and most of the botanical subjects the way I do.
The setup was simple. I placed the light with the soft box at camera left, the white foam core at camera right, and the black one behind the shooting space. Then I started to work with the flowers. I remember the first flower most, probably because it was the one I used as the tester, to dial the light and the look in to just what I wanted. I placed the light just in front of the flower, so if you turned to the side and looked, you’d almost think that the light wouldn't touch it. They call this technique “feathering” the light, which gives a more natural look (like a window light). It sometimes takes a couple of images, moving the light, adjusting it a little this way, a little that way, until I get it where I want it. Once the lighting was set, I had another problem to tackle. Because I was taking full advantage of the 1.4x magnification of the lens, I would never be able to get the entire flower all in focus in one image. The depth of field, even at f/32 which was the limit of my lenses aperture was just too shallow when accounting for the magnification. I was going to have to focus stack the images which meant that I would have to get the nearest piece of the flower to the camera in focus manually, and then after each shot adjust the focus ever so slightly through the image, and repeat that until I had photos of each “slice” of the image in focus which I could then load into a focus stacking program and produce one single image that was sharp and in focus all the way through, There are all sorts of gadgets to make focus stacking simple, rails and dials and things but I had none of these, so I had to manually adjust the lens after each photo. In doing that, I had to make sure not to bump the flower or the camera too much or I would ruin the stack and have to start again. Needless to say, it is a laborious process, but the artist does whatever he must in pursuit of the vision. Once that path was set, I decided to use an aperture of f/11 with was the sweet spot for that lens.
When I was satisfied that I could do what I wanted, had the lighting dialed in and the look crafted, I started working. Now, it’s at this point that my memory goes a bit fuzzy and time begins to blur. I know that I photographed a total of 16 flowers. Outside of that, the whole thing runs together in my mind. Just capturing the images alone took several hours. Uploading, separating, initial edits, stacking, black and white conversion, dodging and burning, and compositing into the grid took quite a few more. Somewhere along the way, I understood that the image would be a grid of 9, just like my “Punkins and Squarsh” piece and I began to envision it as a massive print in that same vein. I do remember the struggle over which 9 photos I would choose, and where in the grid they would go. In the end the final image is a monster. Each of the 9 images is made up of somewhere between 150 and 250 individual photos that had to be stacked, meaning that when you see the final image, you’re seeing well over a thousand individual photographs. The result is an image that I can print to incredibly large sizes and still retain all of the details. The 40x40” Premium Acrylic print that I am offering, while large, is about half the size of the ultimate vision for “Detritus”. The naming of this piece happened at some point during the 13 hours it took from start to finish. I have always loved that word, detritus, which has multiple meanings, all of which apply here, but when I use it I’m thinking of “remnants” or “that which is left behind”. It has a sad, almost elegiac feel to it that lines up perfectly with the photo itself. It’s hard for me to call “Detritus” a photograph, because it is so much more than what that word encapsulates. The sheer size of it, for one, but also the way each flower compliments those around it, the way they flow together.
In the time since, whenever I talk about the making of this image, I struggle with describing it because quite honestly, I don’t know exactly how it happened. Obviously I know the techniques I used, and I know I was the one doing it all, but I have to tell you, I’ll be damned if I did any of it consciously. It was almost like I was watching someone else do it from outside of myself. It makes me think of my work as a strange mix of technique and inspiration. Sometimes I plan the images out, like the old-timey portraits and some of the more theatrical things I’ve done, and then sometimes lighting strikes and all of a sudden the day is over and I find that I’ve made something spectacular. Anyway, when “Detritus” was done, and my ritual for new work had been observed (maybe one day I’ll tell you what that is) I called my nephew Tyler to show him the image and talk about it and I told him “It was like I became one with the spirit of creativity” because I really do believe that that there is some kind of force behind it. And you might think that sounds a little silly or woo-woo or far out, and that’s ok, but I suspect any artist who comes across this will know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s like when Bob Dylan was asked about his early songs and how he wrote them and he says he doesn’t know how he did, almost like it was magic. My journey in photography has consistently been punctuated by these moments, from the earliest inkling that maybe photography was something I’d be good at (a story of its own for another time) to the crafting and conceptualizing of my portrait series, calla lilies, you name it. When the feeling hits you and the muse chooses you, your only job is to listen, and do what you can to fulfill the vision. And if your craft and technique are solid, well, then you just get out of your own way and get the thing done. I feel like I did that on this one. And as for the meaning of this image, well, I know what it means to me but that’s as much as I’ll say. Art speaks to us all in different ways, and I would be doing a disservice to the viewer if I spoiled the meaning behind any of it. In the final analysis, I would leave it up to each of you to discover your own meaning.
Well, that’s about all I have for now. Maybe after this you’ll go back to my Artworks gallery and see “Detritus” and some of my other works with a new set of eyes.
-Cory