I’m back in the studio making negatives and prints of these incredible plants up here. Today, I made negatives of two varieties; a Buffalo Plum plant and a Slendertube Skyrocket plant.
One plant is purple (Buffalo Plum) and the other a “peach color”. Wet Collodion sees these colors very differently. It’s a challenge to make exposures that will capture everything. I have to sacrifice some part of the image for another when there’s a three or four stops difference.
SLENDERTUBE SKYROCKET
Ipomopsis tenuituba is a species of flowering plant in the phlox family known by the common name slendertube skyrocket, or slendertube ipomopsis. It is native to much of the western United States. In Colorado, it is found on rocky mountain slopes. This is a perennial herb producing an erect stem with widely spaced leaves, each 3 to 6 centimeters long and with many narrow, fingerlike lobes. The inflorescences toward the top of the stem each hold three to seven flowers. The flower is very pale to medium pink, sometimes with white streaks, or solid white. It is a tube 2 to 5 centimeters long, opening into a corolla of five twisting, pointed, ribbonlike lobes. The stamens and style do not protrude far from the mouth of the flower, if at all. While it is a perennial plant, it dies after its first flowering.