Six Seasons: Selection by Josh Wells

During lockdown and facing a complete disappearance of my freelance work I developed a system for photographing flora without removing them from the stem. The portable setup used an Eastern European lens from the 1950s which I taped onto my camera backwards a black tote bag as a backdrop and a handheld flash which is small by portraiture standards yet soft and beautiful when operating on a macro scale. Using lighting technique borrowed from studio portraiture I found I could highlight the shape colour and form of the flora while allowing the shadows to melt into the background. I trialled this method in my own backyard and later moved to the neighbourhood. I had heard about the Noongar six seasons and found it was a very compelling way of understanding weather patterns in Western Australia: it felt like we had been fruitlessly trying to make British weather comply with a completely different climate. For the creation of this piece I worked with Sue of the Friends on Inglewood Triangle a conservation group who maintain a small patch of undeveloped land in the heart of Inglewood. We booked photoshoots inside the Triangle for each of the six seasons and I was quickly astounded by the range of colour transformation and diversity within an ecosystem which sits largely ignored and just off a major thoroughfare.