Community Gallery: Photographing the Greener Side of Life

Aside from accentuating our living spaces, plants are great sources of inspiration. We’ve seen photography-related projects make use of plants, just like community member @papa-attila's Foreverflower photo album, and The Eden Project in the UK shot with the Lomo'Instant Automat. We have also seen initiatives such as The Sustainable Darkroom push for more sustainable methods in film development.

In celebration of the International Plants Appreciation Day we're listing a few of the many benefits we can gather from plants, especially the artists in us who stand to benefit from plants' aesthetic, practical and profound beauty!

We don't need an extensive and grandiose garden to appreciate the advantages of having plant companions, as even indoor plants have a lot of benefits such as reducing stress levels and boosting productivity which is good for our mental health.

Meanwhile, some houseplants such as spider plants and rubber trees also improve living spaces by increasing indoor air quality.

At the height of the pandemic, as many of us were stuck inside our homes due to lockdowns, we turned to various hobbies, often as simple as adorning our homes with different kinds of plants.

By taking care of plants we become more attuned to our environment and the other species we coexist with, helping us also build our connection with our surroundings and live a more vibrant life.

Aside from their invaluable medicinal qualities, humans have also come to associate specific symbolisms to flowers and plants. In Japan, the flowering of cherry blossoms heralds the coming of spring and symbolizes the fragile, fleeting, yet beautiful nature of life. In India, as in many Eastern religious practices, the lotus is seen as a sacred flower symbolizing spirituality, inner strength and illumination, among other things.

The mountain flower Edelweiss stands for devotion in Austria and is considered its national flower. And of course all over the world and in many cultures, to give a beloved a rose is to express deep love, while the cheerful and bright sunflower signifies happiness and peace. These are just some of the many ways we've come to associate meanings with plants, and the depth of these associations manifests the best in our usage of them in art, music, literature and of course photography.

Here at Lomography, we get thousands of fun photographs of plants from our community members. There are endless ways to capture plants' beautiful and diverse silhouettes, sometimes along with pet companions or within the photographer's working spaces, all of which offer us a glimpse of other people's lives.

What are your favorite plants to keep around or photograph? Share them with us below!

written by sylvann on 2023-04-13 #culture #people #places #nature #plants #community #plant-appreciation-day