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Capturing Serenity: Dive into the Mystical World of the Pale Blue Iris

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Ethereal Iris — a blue bearded iris photographed at Descanso Gardens, post-processed into a painterly fine-art image with deep blue tones against a dark, softened background. Artwork by John Corney.
"Ethereal Iris" — the finished artwork. © John Corney

The bearded iris is one of the most rewarding flowers to photograph, and one of the most difficult to photograph well. Its ruffled, almost impossibly intricate petals catch light beautifully — but they also sit in busy garden beds, surrounded by foliage and distractions that pull the eye away. This post is the story of one iris, and how it travelled from a quick phone snapshot to the finished artwork I've called Ethereal Iris.

The Garden I Always Meant to Visit

I first heard of Descanso Gardens many years ago, when it was featured on one of Huell Howser's shows on PBS. Like a lot of viewers, I watched, thought "what a lovely place — I really must go there someday," and then somehow never did. The years went by and Descanso stayed on the someday list.

What finally got me there was my photography friend Denise, who suggested we visit together. I'm so glad she did. Descanso Gardens, in La Cañada Flintridge just north of Los Angeles, is 150 acres of woodland and cultivated gardens, and on the day we went — May 15, 2024 — the iris beds were in full, glorious bloom. It was everything Huell Howser had promised, and well worth the wait.

The Photograph

I shot this blue bearded iris, as I do most of my photography these days, on my Google Pixel phone. I've largely stopped carrying a heavy DSLR for garden visits — the Pixel's camera is more than capable of capturing a starting image with enough detail and dynamic range to work with later. And "an image to work with later" is exactly how I think about it. The photograph is the raw material; the artwork comes afterwards.

The original photograph of two pale blue bearded irises, taken on a Google Pixel phone at Descanso Gardens, before any post-processing — naturally lit, with a busy garden background.
The original photograph, straight from my Pixel phone, before any editing.

From Snapshot to Artwork

As you can see above, the original photo was a pleasant enough garden snapshot — two pale ice-blue irises, naturally lit, sitting in their bed with a path and other plantings behind them. A nice record of the moment, but not yet a piece I'd want to hang on a wall. The background was busy, the colours were soft to the point of being a little flat, and the blooms didn't quite stand out the way they had in person.

The transformation happened in post-processing, in two stages. I worked the image first in Topaz Labs software and then in Photoshop. The goals were straightforward: deepen and enrich the blue so it sang rather than whispered; darken and simplify the background so the flowers lifted cleanly off it; and bring out the structure and ruffle of the petals, pushing the image a little away from photography and a little towards painting. The result is the Ethereal Iris you see at the top of this post — the same flower, the same moment at Descanso, but rendered as the artwork I felt the iris deserved.

This is more and more how I work: the phone captures the possibility, and the real creative decisions happen afterwards, in the editing. It's a process that sits somewhere between traditional photography and digital art, and it's the part I enjoy most.

Bringing Ethereal Iris Into Your Home

If the image appeals to you, Ethereal Iris is available as a canvas print — and on a range of other products — in my Redbubble shop. A cool-toned floral like this one suits a bedroom, a bathroom, or any quiet corner of a room that could use a calm focal point.

👉 Ethereal Iris on Redbubble

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

And if you've bought a print of Ethereal Iris, I'd genuinely love to hear what you think — a review on Redbubble helps other people discover my work, and it always makes my day to know one of my pieces has found a wall to live on.

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Samoan Youth

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This young man was preparing with his friends for his moment of fame on the stage at the Samoan Village at the Polynesian dance festival called Pasifika in Auckland in March this year. Samoan Youth Canon EOS 20D 1/30sec at f/20 ISO 200 Canon 70-300mm lens at 300mm More photographs from the same Pasifika Festival day can be found in my new post, Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival .
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Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

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Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026 Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now. She has taken up flying. A Brief Recap for New Readers If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland , waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn. Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart pa...
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Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 — © John Corney 2026 This one has a real backstory, and I'd like to tell it properly. An Auckland Sighting On one of my annual visits home to New Zealand, I was walking through central Auckland — at the corner of Queen Street and Karangahape Road (K Road, as everyone calls it) — when a small yellow car went past me and stopped me mid-stride. It was a beautifully kept Austin A35, one of the little British runabouts that were everywhere in New Zealand when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. Driving it was a woman of a certain age with the confident bearing of someone who had been driving that same car, or one like it, for decades. She looked entirely at home behind the wheel. She belonged to the car and the car belonged to her, and neither of them was in any hurry to change. If you know Auckland, that particular corner will register: Queen Stree...
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