These dried plant stems were growing in a field in a village near my home — the kind of roadside plants that disappear into the background of a landscape without anyone stopping to look. I stopped, left my bike, and lay almost flat on the ground to shoot upward against the open sky, removing any distracting background entirely.
The image was created using in-camera multiple exposure: ten frames fired in succession, handheld, each one shifting slightly from the last. The technique amplifies what was already there — the radiating stems, the dense texture of the seed heads, the energy of a plant that is technically dead but holds its shape with surprising authority.
In black and white against a pale sky, the stems read almost like ink on paper — a botanical illustration drawn by movement rather than by hand. The multiple exposure adds a faint ghost of repetition, a shimmer, as if the plant is still vibrating slightly from the wind that shaped it.
There is a Japanese concept — wabi-sabi — that finds beauty in things that are imperfect, incomplete, and transient. This plant is all three. It was never going to end up in a vase or a garden. It was just standing in a field, being beautiful in a way that required getting close to the ground to see.
This print works in spaces that appreciate quiet observation and natural form. It belongs alongside raw materials — paper, linen, unfinished wood.
EXIF data of the photograph
- Camera Model: NIKON Z 7
- Lens model: NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/4 S
- Date taken: 22. 3. 2026
- Exposure time: 1/100s
- F-Number: f/4.0
- ISO speed ratings: 250
- Focal length: 52mm
- Size of the photo: 5504 x 8256 px
