Karl Blossfeldt

Josh Sampson

Karl’s Photography Karl Blossfeldt was a German photographer who is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things. He was inspired by the way in which they grow and believed that ‘the plant must be valued as a totally artistic and architectural structure’.Blossfeldt made most of his photographs with a homemade camera that could magnify the subject up to thirty times its size, which revealed details within a plant’s natural structure. He also developed a series of homemade cameras that allowed him to photograph plant surfaces in amazing detail. This reflected his interest in repetitive patterns found in nature’s textures and forms. Here are some examples of his work:

You can see the amount of detail his homemade camera picked up in these photographs.

My ImagesI tried to replicate Blossfeldt’s work by choosing two plants which were unique and which would allow my camera to pick up extensive details on them. Once picking a plant which I thought would work the best, I place it on a piece of card which contrasted it’s colour and placed my camera on a tripod so that I could take a photograph without worrying about movement blur from my hand. I also set my camera to an F-stop of 13, a shutter speed of 1/50th and an ISO of 400. Once I was pleased with a picture that I had taken, I placed it in to Photoshop and started to adjust the settings. First I changed them to Black & White as this is what Blossfeldt did with all of his images and then changed the brightness levels and exposure levels as the image was quite dark. Lastly, I cropped the image to ensure the plant was the focal point and looked professional.

Images before they went into Photoshop

In Photoshop and Final Image

Finished images

• F-Stop: 13• Shutter Speed: 1/50th• ISO: 400

Photoshop screenshot