All images are copyrighted by Camer@Work unless otherwise, and are not to be used without permission.
For enquiries or comments, please contact: onbotanical@gmail.com.
Behind Camer@work is Lula, (Lula Alvarez) museum consultant and photographer. Passionate about photography she has been taking photographs since she can remember, using, whenever she could, her father’s different cameras: the Voigtlander or the successive Canons he had. But it was at 15 years old when she received her first own camera as a birthday present: a Kodak Pocket Instamatic, when she knew that the relationship was for life.
Her photos at first, were of personal value: home, family portraits and events, but also of historic value. At that time she was living abroad, in Arab countries and felt the need to document everything so she could always remember. And that became an urge along the years, still is. “Photography for me was, and still is, personal, building a personal archive. But in the recent years it is also and indispensable professional tool”.
In the last 20 years the camera has been a vital tool for documenting cultural events, ideas and concepts in research, intellectual statements, portraits of social or aesthetic behaviours and trends. Images have been essential part of her work, especially used as analysing within the context of museums. Actually, the interest in garden and landscape photography started as part of a research for an exhibition some twelve years ago.
She learned gardening early in her life, and was more than a hobby. In recent years, she has also developed an interest for a closer look at nature and has started to to develop macro-photography of some subjects related to botanical world: gardens, plants, flora and trees, botanical gardens, nurseries, etc., both in studio and outdoors in their natural habitat. It is not only a study for botanical purposes, but an abstraction of color and forms: sometimes there is a fade of lines and contours, an evanescence of the idea of the subject, as a way of portraying the essence of flowers, plants, trees and landscaping gardening.
I am very honored that Jean's Garden (Jean Potuchek) recommended this blog in her monthly post of "blogs to watch" to the Blotanical colleagues:
I am very much a word person and have a strong preference for blogs that are more word-based than image-based, but I make an exception for On Botanical Photography. Lula Alvarez, the creative genius behind this blog, is a professional photographer whose botanical photographs are stunningly beautiful. Most of her images are macro shots, and their composition sometimes resembles abstract art. But these photos are careful botanical studies. Plants are carefully identified, and the images often provide extraordinary detail that leads me to look at familiar plants in a whole new way. For those of us whose winter landscapes are predominantly white and grey, the intense colors of Lula’s images (even those of plants in snow) make the spirits soar. Although this blog is several months old, relatively few people seem to have discovered it. If you are one of those who have not, check it out; you won’t be disappointed.I am also honnored that another fellow blogger Charlotte in Charlotte's The Galloping Gardener has recommend this blog recently:
Two new blogs that celebrate plants at their finest are On Botanical Photography, where every posting features a photograph with details of the featured plant, ..... are featured in my side bar because I like to check them out daily - just for the eye candy - and you can also follow them on Blotanical.You can also visit my other blog on museums: MuseumsMore
