A-Zaleas at the Isabella Plantation

Level 3 photographyhomework at Richmond Art College

Our task was to find approximations to letters of the alphabet in the world around us. I combined this with a photowalk to Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park where azaleas, bluebells and more were in bloom. A couple of the images were from an earlier walk to Kew Gardens, to capture the spring blossom, when I first conceived the idea of how to approach this ‘alphabetography’ task. One was taken on a mobile phone, on Barnes footbridge over the Thames.

Once I started looking, letters popped out everywhere – in the shapes of branches, in flowers, in grass and even in clouds and water. I used a macro lens for some images, such as when focusing in on the delicate tracery of a flower, a wide angle lens for the famous ‘still pond’ with the reflections of the surrounding flowers, trees and sky, and for everything else a fixed 50mm lens. Camera was Nikon Z6:2. Minimal post-processing was done in Photoshop, using tools to darken slightly specific areas of an image to emphasise the letter shape that I saw, without distorting the natural shape of the flower or branch.

One image I was particularly pleased with was the letter O. This was my first successful attempt to capture a starburst, it was just there waiting for a passing photographer, peeking through the rhododendron bushes. I discovered from that how to do it in future which made me very happy.