Blooming Under Intense Conditions

My final for Studio Lighting II. For this project, I decided to focus on the beauty of creating flowering tea, also known as blooming tea. Brewing tea is sometimes used as part of ceremony, and I wanted this series to feel like I was capturing a performance art – the tea pod patiently sitting inside the bottom of the pot, filling the teapot with boiling water and capturing the turbulence, and then the final result of the finished tea with its delicate flowers and tea leaves floating within. While the first two images are composed and photographed exactly the same, the final image, much like its transformation, is different from how it started.