Flowers have long been Katie Clulow’s passion. But when floristry no longer suited her busy lifestyle as a mum of two, her botanical photography and photo print and textile design business, Flowers for Kate, came into bloom. Working out of her Sydney home, the self-taught photographer spends a lot of her time selecting the perfect flower to create art she is proud of. Here, she talks about her creative process, the joy of studying nature for a living and her advice for those following in her artistic footsteps.
Creative Beginnings
It happened very fluidly. I was a florist, as well as a flower buyer at the markets for other florists. I’d have my phone with me so I started taking photos of the flowers – Instagram was starting to get popular and I started blogging what I found. People really liked the photos I was posting and it kind of took off from there.
A Business in Bloom
I was always looking for something creative and floristry gave me that. Then, when I couldn’t do it anymore because of having young kids, photography was really exciting. As a mum of two, my career kind of went sideways for a while; I think it happens to a lot of mums when they’re either working fulltime and need to adapt, or when they’re in a family dynamic. It was the introduction of Instagram that enabled me to really start photographing flowers and developing a following of people who appreciated my work.
Finding the Right Path
I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I was younger and I played around with a lot of different things. I did nursing at university because my dad told me I had to go to uni, but I was never going to be a nurse. I tried a lot of different things growing up, such as hospitality, but it wasn’t until later on, when I had time at home with kids, that I was able to decide what I wanted to do. Maturity gave me the patience to be able to sit down and learn something new and really hone in a passion for flowers and floristry.
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Learning the Art of Photography
I love doing courses and being involved in other people's creative processes. There’s a place called The School in Sydney’s Rosebery and I did an Instagram course there. They had a competition to submit a photo to win an Olympus camera, which I won. It just went from there. The fast-paced phone photos and Instagram photos always came easily to me, so it was nice to slow down and start using a camera. My cousin is an architectural photographer and he gave me a few lessons, but my photography has mostly evolved around shooting still-life objects.
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A Day in the Life
Most of the prints I do end up as interior art pieces in people’s homes, so I’m quite conscious of colour and texture. My mornings involve wandering around the flower markets and finding something that takes my eye. Then I come home, grab a coffee, get the kids off to school and come back and find a space where I can sit and play around with the flowers. I usually shoot in natural light, so I often need to wait until the afternoon for that. I like to do a bit of post-production straight away. I don’t generally alter my images too much, so post-production is just little tweaks like background editing. Working with fresh flowers, I need to work quite quickly. I often get to the business side of things at night, sending out invoices and that kind of thing.
Where the Magic Happens
I've always worked from home. We recently moved, so it's a new space. I have two zones where I work: one has a big desk where I can put prints out and a backdrop set up next to some beautiful natural light so I can shoot inside or outside. And then I have spots where I can sit to do orders or post-production on photos. Having a dedicated studio space somewhere else would be overwhelming for me because I’d feel like I had to be in it all the time, but my creative flow comes and goes, especially with seasonal flowers.
Tools of the Trade
I’m pretty basic with the things I use. I like to shoot the flowers in natural light. I use an Olympus OM-D E-M10 camera – it was the first camera I used. Big megapixels and a nice lens adds to the quality of the photos. I use the Apple Photoshop app to edit — it's free and it’s great; you can go to town and create a beautiful image.
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Creative Flow Comes and Goes
Invoicing and all that sort of stuff can sometimes feel like a slog, but for me [the creative] work is pure joy. Creative flow comes and goes and I hate to force it when it's not there but I just adore it; it’s given me a beautiful lease on life. I do have the privilege of a second job as a learning support teacher for kids with disabilities that allows me to wait for the seasons and for a flower that I love to arrive so I can shoot that. [That job] gives my artistic side a bit more balance and gives me a regular income.
A Profession to be Proud Of
The pictures I show represent me. I’m proud of the quality, I’m proud of what I've learnt and I love having a creative side to my life. I don’t know where I’d be without that. Creativity is part of my personality. It's being able to escape the mundane things in life by learning a new technique or meeting other creative people.
Advice for a Creative Life
The most important thing is working from where you are, with what you have, and being able to learn something and to attempt to create something that makes everyone's day better.
What To Try
- Nikon CoolPix P950
- Joby GripTight One GP Stand for Smartphones Black
- Adobe Creative Cloud Individual Education Edition POSA
- J.Burrows Carbonless Duplicate Tax Invoice/Statement Book
