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

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.

What is Bokeh?

Posted July 12, 2011

Columbine at the Huntington Library gardens, shot at f/4.5 to throw the background into bokeh. © John Corney A photograph I took of columbines at the Huntington Library gardens recently has such a beautiful bokeh effect that I thought I'd use it as an excuse to talk about bokeh today — what it is, where the word comes from, and how to get it in your own photographs. What Bokeh Actually Is The word bokeh comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け), meaning "blurred" or "haze." It started being used by photographers in the late 1990s to describe specifically the quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photograph — not just the fact that the background is blurred, but how aesthetically the blurring is rendered. Good bokeh is creamy, smooth, and pleasing. Bad bokeh is harsh, distracting, or busy. Two lenses can produce the same depth of field but very different bokeh. It's pronounc...

Digital Art and Photography by John Corney

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