Shutterbug Likes his Flowers Close Up
Don Ziegler - (Photo by Lancaster Newspapers) July 26, 2010
By Lori Van Ingen
Staff Writer Lancaster Newspapers
Looking at flowers from the macro level, Don Ziegler sees the spiritual energy flowing from them.
Not wanting to miss it, Ziegler snaps a picture, and then another.
"People often think they are just out of focus, but they're not. I'm looking for the energy," Ziegler said.
"Within the flower, at the liquid unfolding edges of petals and leaves, appear sharp lines of fusion, shifting fields of light, bright spaces where streaming energy relaxed into matter."
Ziegler likens it to scuba diving.
"I'm down under this level of the representative," he said. "It just feels like an energy field. I just move the lens and see what appears. When I see it, I pull the trigger and see what I've got."
Ziegler began taking photographs as a child after his parents gave him a Brownie camera that took black-and-white pictures with 120 roll film.
"I took pictures of flowers even back then," he said.
He didn't take many pictures in high school, but started up again when he went overseas in voluntary service with Mennonite Central Committee. He and his wife, Priscilla, taught in the Congo and in the West Bank before moving back to Akron in 1970.
During his work with MCC, Ziegler used a single-lens reflex camera and shot a lot of pictures of flowers.
"I have piles of them," he said. "Most of them are the realistic, iconic flowers."
For 25 to 30 years, Ziegler developed his own black-and-white pictures. But after working with chemicals for so long, he became sensitive to them and had to sell his darkroom equipment.
About the same time, digital photography was starting to become popular. But Ziegler decided he didn't want to use digital until the quality was as good as he could get with film.
That happened about three years ago.
"So I bought a digital camera, a Canon Rebel XT," Ziegler said.
In the meantime, Ziegler kept seeing images in his head.
"They were of flowing and unfolding fields of energy and light. They were persistent and kept coming back," he said.
Ziegler didn't know how to capture the images. He thought about oil paints, but he didn't know how to paint.
Then he saw a friend who had taken a photograph that was so much like what Ziegler had been seeing in his mind that he was amazed.
"He told me it was digital and how he did it, so I bought a macro lens to get really close - that was the door, the window ... ."
For days and weeks, Ziegler could be found crawling in the dirt, looking at flowers around his home.
"I'd be an inch away, and at that level, everything shifts differently," Ziegler said. "The color changes. The forms are dynamic, constantly moving. The whole feeling is different."
Unlike other photographers, Ziegler, 67, doesn't use a tripod to capture his images. "Everything is hand-held," he said.
He also doesn't use Photoshop or other software to manipulate the images. He does crop them, however.
Among the flowers Ziegler has photographed are cosmic allium, damask, blue sterner, Katey's and Kate's rose, lavender and Dutchman's breeches.
At least 90 percent of the flowers Ziegler photographs are grown in his own backyard.
Ziegler's photographs will be on display at Landis Homes, 1001 E. Oregon Road, Lititz, from Aug. 3 through October. An opening reception will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Aug. 3 in the Harvest View lobby and galleries.
His images - both the realistic flowers and the spiritual, macro-photographed flowers - are available in framed, matted and notecard formats.
lvaningen@lnpnews.com
© 2010 Lancaster Newspapers
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