Remnant Project
Behind the scenes
Not far from Jason Koster’s home stands a lone Purple Orchid tree. Aside from the purple flowers once a year, the tree is rather ordinary. It didn’t take long for Koster to noticed its seedpods scattered on the ground. Making sure to stop by when he was in the area he began collecting the seedpods that intrigued him. For months his collection grew. All the while technical and conceptual preparations percolated in his mind with anticipation of a new seedpod series.
Flower from the Purple Orchid tree near Koster’s home.
Knowing the approaching desert summer heat would limit outdoor activities, Koster set this time aside to turn to the studio. This new seedpod series offered a subject that required an approach of patience as well as precision. In some cases all the fans in the studio had to be turned off in order to keep the seedpod from moving.
Left: Koster’s large format camera points down at Purple Orchid seedpod.
Right: Koster’s large format lens with the manual aperture lever set to f/16
For this body of work Koster felt color was essential. Where his earlier Of Seed and Self series embraced the charming qualities of medium format black and white film, the Purple Orchid seedpods required a different treatment. Koster paired their natural hues with the type of hyper-white background he used to conclude his Being Seen series, heightening both seedpod shape and environmental space.
Left: Koster frames up the next seedpod image. The image on a large format camera appears upside down.
Right: Only a portion of the seedpod is visible on the LCD screen of Koster’s digital camera.
Technically, the work merges analog and digital sensibilities. Using the camera movements of a traditional large format film camera in tandem with a high-resolution digital camera. Koster also incorporated a stitching process similar to the one he uses for his panoramic landscapes to render extreme detail and ultimately produce a file large enough to be able to make a larger than human size print. Koster would take the time to roughly assembled each image to ensure there were no errors before removing the seedpod from the stage and resetting the camera.
Images selected to begin the assembly process before moving onto the next seedpod.
Some of the seedpods in this series were photographed from only one side, others were photographed both front and back. Over several weeks a total of 94 images were created before being edited down to 47.
An after shoot group shot of all the seedpods in Koster’s Remnant Project series. Each seedpod was tagged in case a reshoot was needed.