Jo Stephen’s ethereal images celebrate the beauty of wildflowers – and remind us how vital it is to protect them
PHOTOGRAPHY SPECIAL: MACRO
It’s a sunny early summer’s day and I am sitting in a meadow listening to the chirping of grasshoppers and crickets, the songs of skylarks and stonechats and the buzzing of insects flitting between the wildflowers.
Time almost seems to stand still as I watch the daisies and grasses sway in the breeze through the camera viewfinder. Whatever is going on in the wider world, all the worries that I carry around with me, all slip away in this moment of simple connection and stillness. It is then that I release the shutter and take my photograph.
WHY FLOWERS?
Wildflower photography accounts for a large body of my work. While I also enjoy creating images of habitats and wildlife, it is our native plants that really capture my imagination. There is an incredible diversity of form, colour and texture within the botanical realm, which is a joy to explore and capture as a photographer.
Plants are fundamental to life on the planet – their ability to turn sunlight into energy and create the atmosphere we breathe and the food we eat never ceases to amaze me. We are so connected to the wonderful world of plants.
As organisms that are unable to run away when in danger, or to travel to find a mate, plants have evolved with amazing and beautiful adaptations to meet these needs. The myriad flower forms and colours designed to attract pollinators are some of the most delightful, but travel to the heaths and there are glistening sundews ready to trap small insects in their bejewelled leaves and coconut-scented gorse with exploding seed pods. In the woods, pale, ghostly plants such as bird’s-nest orchids and toothwort, which don’t produce green-coloured chlorophyl to photosynthesise, parasitise the roots of trees and steal nutrients. I find the diversity, resilience and adaptability of wildflowers incredibly beautiful.
I have always loved photography and nature. The two came together in earnest following a serious illness almost a decade ago. During my recovery, I would walk in the fields and woods around the village with my camera, and wildflowers became the subject of most of my imagery.
I live in a little village outside the market town of Blandford Forum in Dorset. On the edge of the Blackmor
