A Blooming Genius!
By Jim Patterson

Plant and flower photography is a passion of mine that the digital camera has made more enjoyable, due to the gratification of seeing the results instantly.

When I first met Carol Rollick, my admiration for her incredible flower images was matched with amazement when she told me she did not use a camera.

Sure, lots of people have put flowers and leaves on the platen of a flatbed scanner with some remarkable resulting images but generally, they look liked pressed flowers from a Civil War family bible.

Rollick's unusual technique involves putting individual live flowers or small groups on a scanner with a deep box lid to allow the blooms to "pose" in full dimension. And dimension is what makes Carol's work spectacular. Her images have a rich fullness that brings to mind Audubon's fantastic bird prints, qualities that I find hard to reconcile with the flat lighting of a scanner.

She then turns to Photoshop to extract the blossom images from their backgrounds, "change their angle and perspective," and, I suspect, doing a lot more with filters and blending layers. The images are saved in layered .psd files to become components of her rich flower montages.

Before flattening, the files must be huge as Carol mentioned storage challenges, only "getting one or two compositions on a Zip disk." She prints the images on an inkjet in limited editions for sale.

She supplies the following artist's statement:

"Carol's career as an interior designer and professional member of A.S.I.D fostered her love for the "decorative fine arts." Coupled with her passion for nature, the resulting floral images are a natural progression. Now, working with the artist's newest tool, the computer, Carol creates her floral images to brighten the home. Though neither photography nor traditional medium, her images extol the beauty of form and color. She produces her original images as limited edition prints, signed and numbered by the artist.

"Throughout the ages, man has used tools to express his vision of the world about him... a stick traced in mud, a quill in berry juice, a brush dipped in pigment, a chisel in stone... each tool has revolutionized art, but none, Carol feels, as dramatically as the computer. Using this newest of "paintbrushes," Carol's original floral images pay tribute to nature's dazzling display, capturing their fleeting freshness for year-round pleasure in the home."

In the 1920's, the painter-sculptor-photographer Man Ray startled the world with his "Rayographs," found objects placed on a sheet of photo paper, then painted with light. His 1921 "Bunch of Flowers" was just that, a small bouquet in shades of black and gray showing dimension and detail.

It would be pretentious for me to compare Carol Rollick's work with the acknowledged "genius" of the late Man Ray. Different times. Different techniques. Different goals.

Man Ray's goal was to startle the art and photography worlds with his daring experiments. Carol Rollick's images are startling in their richness, their depth and their color. I prefer Carol's work.

Carol Rollick, who splits her time between St. Petersburg, Florida, and Franklin, North Carolina, can be contacted by email at: rollick@gte.net.

Jim Patterson is a Largo, Florida, graphic designer/writer/photographer. He is the digital photo columnist for Mac Today magazine and covers all sorts of interesting stuff for Photoshop User magazine. A frequently published freelance travel photojournalist, he is also the author of a novel, (The Thirteen by James Patterson http://www.1stbooks.com). Email Jim at jsaurian@tampabay.rr.com.