Michael and Tina Timmons, owners of The Portrait Gallery, Vassar, Mich., have been featured here before for Prints that Win, but for their printing expertise. Sterling photographers in their own right, they also know how to print for competition, and print winners.

This time around, Tina is being honored for her capture of an Iris from her garden called Curves of Iris. Michael had quadruple bypass surgery (!) last year following a heart attack. We’re pleased to report that he’s recovering nicely, and the Timmons are back to their frenetic pace.

“Needless to say, we were home a lot more than we normally are, so I had more chances to enjoy my flowers. This year I didn’t get to see them at all,” says Tina. “I shot every day through the Iris season, and picked my favorite to enter in competition.”

The result was this beautiful rendition, which won a LexJet Sunset Award at the Professional Photographers of Michigan print competition. Tina says that her typical method for capturing flowers is to use a tripod and a macro lens, followed by some enhancement with Nik filters and some additional cleanup in Photoshop.

“Sometimes we’ll add a reflector fill outdoors, or we’ll do subtractive lighting if the flower is in open sun. We’ll use those tactics to control what lighting is available in nature,” Tina explains. “The Iris has a poetic motion about it with the leaves and the way everything blends together. When I work with any flower I’m very cautious about what’s in the background so there’s nothing distracting, including other flowers.”

The standard print medium for competition and the couple’s interior décor work is LexJet Sunset Photo eSatin, printed on an Epson Stylus Pro 9880 wide-format inkjet printer, which is then laminated. Though Curves of Iris was printed in the usual way, it was printed for this competition on a Hahnemuhle watercolor paper to provide a more fine-art look to the image.