Ornamental Grass

I strained and tip-toed, trying to get a good look through the viewfinder. My camera was set up really high on the tripod as I needed to have a clear view of my subject over bushes in the foreground. A passerby looked hard at the direction my camera was pointing at, trying to figure out what the crazy photographer was shooting … nothing, there’s nothing interesting there. Just a bunch of messy bushes and clumps of grass in the garden. These guys with big lenses are weird, he must have been thinking.

What caught my eyes was a cluster of ornamental grass in shades of silvery green. I loved how they grew out of the slope and leaned slightly. I loved the flow and the elegance of the blades. I loved how there’s order in chaos. Chaos really was the right word for it, as the background was … well, messy. Bright highlights, dark shadows, it’s got everything.

It took me a few iterations to transform the photograph into what I think captures the natural beauty. The high key look and the sketch treatment simplifies the complex scene, as is removing most of the colour, leaving just a few blades coloured with the palette of my choice.