Red flames
- 📍 Location: Lisse, South Holland, Netherlands
- 📅 Date: 2024
I put the camera on the soil between two rows and shot upward, so the tulips stand over the lens rather than in front of it. From down there they are no longer a crop laid out in lines — they are a group of shapes rising against the sky, which is where the title comes from.
The weather did the rest. Heavy grey cloud with hard edges, and enough light leaking through to keep the petals lit from behind. Red against grey is one of the strongest pairs there is, and the storm sky gave me it without any help.
A wide lens very close exaggerates the nearest blooms and lets the row fall away quickly behind them. I kept a shallow strip of green leaves along the bottom so the flowers are attached to something; without it they float, and the picture becomes a graphic rather than a photograph.
The Dutch bulb fields are enormous, flat and completely regular, and the standard picture of them is made from a distance with a drone. Lying in the dirt in one row, looking up, felt like the only way to make something that was mine.
Limited-edition fine-art print from the Skywaven Studios collection, available in several sizes, papers and framing options.
