When life won't stay still...

...I make still lifes.

When I painted I was never that keen on still life work and would pretty much avoid it altogether. Now I take photographs I love it. I'm not sure when the transition happened but now still lifes give me great pleasure. I suspect it's to do with time and planning. The less still my life, the more I like still life, or something like that.

Juggling the demands of a young family, a career and a small business eats up a lot of my time so I'm not able to trek up mountains and spend hours travelling to beautiful or interesting destinations. Still life projects allow me to work in my own home, whenever I have the time. The planning can take place whenever...in the car, hanging out washing, on the loo...whenever I have a precious five uninterrupted minutes in which I can indulge my imagination.

Now I know there are are amazing photographers out there who never plan their images. Whenever I'm told that though I feel a bit inadequate, and even a bit dirty...as though planning is cheating and something proper photographers don't need to do. But I get a kick out of planning so I'm going to hold my hands up and admit that I'm completely anal about still life work and plan things up to several weeks in advance.

This image started life when I spotted a vase full of gerbera drooping in the window of a cottage in the village where I live. I thought how lovely they looked and thought they'd make a nice image. I imagined the background they'd look good against and the light and even the texture I'd overlay. (Thank you Joe's Sistah, from Flickr)

A couple of weeks later I was in a fabric shop looking through their oddments bin and came across some turquoise velvet for £3. Aha...that will be perfect for my gerbera, I thought.

Then, as luck would have it, I took some portraits for a neighbour's daughter and as a thank you she bought me some flowers. One of them was a red gerbera and I've been waiting patiently for over a week to take this image.

So there you have it. My name is Debra and my grubby little secret is that I don't just like taking photographs I like making them too and if you see me stuck in traffic I'm probably thinking about my next still life project.