Why Miniature Flowers

My father was a camera buff. He had all sorts of cameras, from small to hassleblad. During the 60’s I think you see the hassleblad more than now. We are so digitized that we can even take pictures from our hand phones.

I guess taking pictures has become a habit or just comes naturally to me, coming from a parent who loves taking pictures. He used to take pictures when we went back to our kampong and even of the lady selling petrol. Those days, it was in black & white, since colour was expensive. So, I will only get my prints in black & white which I learnt how to print myself in a dark room. I was taught how to process the negative right up to printing the pictures.

Later, during my teenage years I was too busy with exams and left it alone for quite some time. Only after my father passed away while I was waiting for my form 5 exam results did it jolt me to continue his legacy. When I take pictures I feel that I am close to him, carrying his memories with me. I remember the time when I went down the shaft at the Sungai Lembing tin mine with him; we spent hours there, him teaching me aperture, shutter speed, and seeing the beauty around us.

Everything is beautiful if only you take care to see enough. Hence, the adage “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder”.

I learnt from my father to have a keen eye for details and to search for the beauty in the subject matter. With this in mind, as I grow older, I relate to the belief that all the things which Allah creates has its own beauty and purpose. This was how I started taking pictures of small flowers.

These flowers are usually too small to be noticed and become insignificant to us. Our religion also teaches us that Allah does not forget even our smallest minute deeds or misbehavior, and we can see this in the miniature flowers He created. They are small but they are as perfect as the big flowers and some are very fragrant. As an example; the rubber tree flowers are usually seen in a bunch or inflorescence. They have the fragrance of jasmine and are pretty in a bunch.

I know I am dabbling into botany but I realized that the function of a plant is to attract animals for pollination, and if they are small it will be either that they are very colourful or they have a strong fragrance. I also noticed that they have a unique character of their own.

The hempedu bumi flowers look like 2 men fishing, while the spider plant flower looks like a ballerina. There’s a flower with the local name subang nenek and it does look like an ear-ring of your grandmother or great grandmother.

One can say then, that our forefathers have named the plants based on their looks, and they took the time to look at the characteristics of the flowers before naming them, thus bringing the attention of the passerby to this beauty. We should learn more from the older people to actually spend time to look and learn from nature, because nature can teach us a lot of things.

My fascination with the little flowers and my hence my work, is to show our future generation the beauty that we often take for granted or not even know is there, and hence to teach them to be more careful with these delicate beauties. There’s too much development and technology that our children forget to see what is out there and we forget to show them except for the most obvious.

We can find many miniature flowers in our garden. This can be a mini project for our children. To learn to love the environment, to learn to look around for the small plants and appreciate it. My daughter has caught on to taking photographs and she is into abstract photography. This was because we travel a lot at one time taking pictures of old manuscripts, houses and museums for our research. My young son on the other hand, has taken to pick these small flowers to show me. Children are easily influenced by their parents, as a saying goes ‘they are a white piece of cloth for the parents to paint’. My husband and I are very adamant about them following us wherever we go, even if we need to pay for their fares, or to miss school. This is because our outings will give them more knowledge.

As parents, if we need to literally drag our children around for them to appreciate what we do and teach them to see the environment differently, then so be it, because they are the future of our nation.