Most red, blue, or purple flowers contain pigments called anthocyanins, whose colors are sensitive to pH (the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution). As a result, when we immerse a blue flower into an acid or basic solution, its color is likely to change to red in acid condition, or to green or yellow in basic condition. In this film, to get the most dramatic effects, we immersed all flowers in saturated sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solutions and used macro lenses and a microscope to capture their glorious color transformations.
FLOWERS & COLORS began in late September 2017 and lasted for about 5 months. I took more than 140000 images of time-lapse photography for this project, and the total recording time of all images and video clips is more than 100 hours, the slowest experiment among all these video clips took more than 4.5 hours. Although most of them were not used in the final video, it was well worth the effort.
I used macro photography and photomicrography to reveal the color-changing process of flower pedals in great details, just as other chemical reactions I have shot before.
Carnation, Sweet William, Cineraria, Persian Cyclamen.
MACRO PHOTOGRAPHY
PHOTOMICROGRAPHY
