Digitalab Featured Photographer: Rosie Nixon
At Digitalab, we appreciate the power of photography, whether it’s personal or professional. We asked Rosie Nixon for one of her images and posed a couple of questions to find out exactly what it is she loves about photography and what she’d say to any enthusiastic photographer hoping to make a career out of their passion.
Tell us a bit about this image and why you chose it to be featured.
Now that the chills of winter have passed by there are more and more flowers appearing in the garden to photograph. Most of the flowers I photograph come from my own garden and recently I’ve been creating high key floral macros with available natural light indoors.
At the moment the little spring Anemone blanda are in flower. After checking for imperfections I picked one and brought it indoors to use as my subject for this article.
A tripod, mirror lock up, reflector and using a 10 second timer on the camera are all essentials for working indoors with available natural light. I’ll take ages looking for the best way to photograph the flower in relation to backgrounds and lighting. I’ll experiment with different apertures and move the flower around until I finally make a connection. I know when I’ve made that vital connection as I get a rush of adrenalin and then I’m totally absorbed in the creating process.
For this image the sweeping curves and graceful appearance of the daisy-like flower worked perfectly with the very shallow depth of field I was using – f 1.6. While the pink petals contrasted beautifully with the mass of yellow stamens. I felt that I could create a sense of mystery and exploration while letting my personality start to show in how I manipulated the pixels.
Which styles of photography most interest/inspire you?
I’ve always enjoyed nature macro work and at first I used small apertures or created focus stacked images. There was something lacking in those early images …they just didn’t express me. Then I started using shallow depths of field. Finally I found myself …and those images just oozed with emotion and dreamy softness. I seemed to be able to connect with people through those images using colour, shape, flow and blur along with an element of sharpness.
Over a year ago I took my macro work a step further in the artistic field and invested in some of the Lensbaby optics. I wanted to create more abstract floral work and it’s a work in progress at the moment. Then last summer I completed an Artistic Photography Summer Mentor-ship course. Our photography assignment one week was to study still life paintings from different periods of art history and create our own. It was one of my favourite assignments and this year it’s a style of photography I want to develop using nature as my subject.
What one piece of advice would you give to an aspiring photographer?
Try not to compare your photography to anyone else’s though it’s inevitable that we’ll be influenced by others in the early years. Everyone is unique and sees the world differently. Over time our view will change and so will our photography style. Develop your own vision – be open to change and let that individuality show in your photographs and post editing.