One to remember

I made this image one blazing hot July afternoon while visiting Olbrich Botanical Garden in Madison, WI USA. I was drawn in by the patterns and repetition of form and texture in the scene. Since there were so many daisies in this image, I blurred the edges and applied a subtle vignette during post processing in order to draw attention into the center of the image. I held out for a long time with film cameras before switching to digital, but I could have never made this image with the darkroom techniques I had developed. I was a bit snobby about the choice of tools and considered digital manipulation to be 'cheating'. Now that I've grown older and hopefully a bit wiser, I've come to realize that art is all about the final product and being able to visualize that final product even when the scene in front of the lens is only an approximation of the final piece. It's not about the tools.

This image will always be special to me as it was made during one of the first photo excursions I took with my daughter who, like me, has fallen in love with photography.

She prefers to photograph people, and is 1000 times better at it than I will ever be, so I think she was probably indulging me with this trip to a botanical garden, but this was a proud papa day and one that I'll always remember.