Plant portraits
Single specimens on seamless backgrounds, lit with north-facing daylight. Shot for nurseries, seed catalogues and independent publishers.
Botanical photography
Plants, photographed slowly.
A two-person studio working with botanical subjects — plant portraits, herbarium scans, and the small green things most people walk past.
Selected work
Three ways of looking at a plant
Most commissions fall into one of these. If yours does not, write anyway — the odd ones tend to be the good ones.
Herbarium scans
Flatbed captures of pressed material at 1200 dpi, colour-managed and archived as 16-bit TIFF for collections and private holdings.
Field series
Documentation of a single site across a season. Ongoing since 2021, currently following a shaded ravine and the ferns that hold its bank together.
Studio
How this started
As a habit, mostly. Photographing the same patch of woodland every week until the pictures started adding up to something. It has grown into commissioned work, but the pace has not changed much.
We shoot on a medium-format digital back and an ageing flatbed scanner, and print in-house on cotton rag. Projects take longer than clients expect, and that is usually the point.
Approach
Four working rules
- Daylight where possible, continuous light where not.
- No compositing — what is in the frame was in the room.
- Files delivered colour-managed, raw archives kept five years.
- Specimens returned to the client or composted, as they prefer.
Journal
Notes from the ravine
Occasional field notes. Updated when there is something worth saying.
The dry spell curled the hart’s-tongue back on itself. Photographed it anyway — the curl turned out to be the picture.
Finished scanning the 1970s pressings that came in from a private collection. Tape residue everywhere, but the specimens held.
New croziers on the north bank, three weeks earlier than last year. Same frame, same tripod holes, fourth season running.
Rebuilt the copy stand. It is heavier than it needs to be, which is exactly what a copy stand should be.
Contact
Commissions
We take a handful of commissions a year and keep a short waiting list. Write with the subject, the intended use and your timing — that is usually enough to start.
studio@stillfern.com