Behind the Scenes: My Floral Photography Session at The Met
I had planned it for weeks. I wanted to go... no. I NEEDED to go and see the original
Van Gogh Iris painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City before my workshop at NYBG. What an adventure it turned out to be.
The Van Gogh flower exhibition is currently on at the
New York Botanical Garden through the end of October. Sunflowers fill the garden in front of the Haupt Conservatory while sculptures and vibrant graphics fill the inside, along with roses and other flowers that he painted. It was too late to see the Irises in bloom this year at the Garden but I went to the Presby Memorial Iris Garden in NJ to see the most gorgeous colors towards the end of their peak bloom season. NYBG asked if I would teach the sunflower or something else, I chose the Iris for a lot of reasons. Mostly because, to me, a bearded iris it is the most artful out of the three I could have taught.
Are bearded irises really blue in real life?
They're blue in the painting but Blue Irises aren't common. A bit of research online suggests that over time and with restoration of the original paintings, the hue may have shifted from a blue-violet to more blue. I'm going to talk to an art historian at some point about that because that same bit of research also mentioned the colors he used for those paintings. Colors like Cobalt and Manganese which might need their own blog post to explain. My purpose for making the trip with my flowers to the museum was to match the colors as best as I could. My brother has some fancy cameras and enjoys photography so we went together.
They wouldn't let me take my flowers inside!
Security was insistent that flowers cannot go inside and they would hold them for me to take back when I exit. I tossed my bunch on the floor and said they're not real, you don't understand, I came all this way to do a photoshoot with my flowers. The security guard made a silent "Oh" and said wait here. Supervisor, higher supervisor and somebody on the telephone from somewhere higher than the super supervisor gave the green light after I pulled up my workshop listing on the
NYBG website. There was a condition. I wasn't allowed to carry my flowers to the gallery. And so a docent/guard held my flowers as he walked us to the gallery to behold the masterpiece!
Now I was both excited and laughing as the security guard got teased by other guards who clapped him on the back and said "Congratulations man" as he held the bouquet in front of him. Cute. We got to the gallery and got to work trying to catch some unobstructed pictures while the gallery was full of people. The guard was helpful, he said "WAIT!" and tucked my hair away from my face. Lol.
So. Did my bunch of hand made flowers match the painting?
Absolutely not! Maybe one petal did. So I went shopping. And I began mixing. This is prep I enjoy before every class, every workshop. My process needs to be a certain way, for me.
I later went to see my classroom at the NYBG Watson Continuing Ed building and got a little tour. One week to go for the workshop and a few seats are open. If you can't join me, I hope you will share the link with a friend.
I didn't know it at the time, but if you look closely at the first picture in this blog where I am holding the flowers in the gallery; my apple watch woke up and shows a photo. From a gallery of 24 images that rotate on my watch face, that one at that moment is of my grandmother.
