Four years ago I was looking for a unique way to capture flowers. I came across the work of Japanese artist Makoto Azuma. His work inspired us to experiment with beautiful flowers frozen in ice.
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did they kill the flowers? or was it part of their necessary pruning...? already used floral arrangement? I won't flip my lid over the occasional arrangement, but if you do it every day for a job- of course this might have been a short term project...
When we froze the colorful flowers every arrangement reacted differently. As it froze, bubbles formed at random. After a few days of experimentation, we dropped some ice blocks into a swimming pool and were mesmerized by the results. When immersed in water, the clear ice cracked and created totally unique artworks. Within the process of freezing and thawing, strange and exciting things happened.
Since then I have photographed hundreds of arrangements in ice. My girlfriend and I would collect flowers from local gardens and hedges, arrange them in plastic containers and freeze them overnight. The flowers were then photographed at dawn in the nearest pool, mountain stream or container.
We love the way how every ice block reacts differently to being dropped in water and how the trapped bubbles create drama. But why ice? I find it fascinating that ice can preserve something and at the same time also enhance or distort the beauty of it. For a few fleeting moments, we are treated to this preserved beauty, the past encapsulated perfectly, before the ice melts and flowers wilt and we capture it in beautiful photos.
Some of our photo ideas have ended up on snowboards and book covers and we now sell them as prints on our website. If you're interested, you can find my previous post here!
Note: this post originally had 50 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
