When we think of somewhere we’ve been, what are the first things to come to mind? Perhaps there are memorable smells, a sense of other people being around, or a particular quality of light. But what if we remembered landscapes and experiences through plants? For Hillary Waters Fayle, flower petals, seeds, and foliage combine into a kind of album of various places, which she then uses to create bold cyanotypes.

The artist has long worked with botanicals and other organic materials, notably embroidering foraged leaves and feathers with meticulous geometric designs. With the series Portraits of Place, which she’s been pursuing for the past six years, Fayle precisely arranges individual petals and leaves into intricate, symmetrical, mandala-like compositions on acrylic.

She starts by collecting and drying botanicals from specific locations, such as Grace Farms Foundation in New Canaan, Connecticut, or Maymont Park in Richmond, Virginia. These are then laid onto watercolor paper that’s been painted with UV-sensitive iron salts. After being left out in the sun, these result in the bright blue cyanotypes that chronicle the outlines—perhaps one could even say the spirit—of the distinctive layouts.

“The way these portraits illustrate a very particular place and time via botany can be a way to define the relationship that the people of that place have with the land—almost like a modern-day florilegium,” Fayle tells Colossal. She continues:

All of these pieces are so different and special to me, but it has been particularly meaningful to make portraits of areas that are going to change drastically in the near future, either from development or rising sea levels, fire, etc. It feels like a way of preserving and honoring the land and all that is present there right now. 

Flowers and plants symbolize the natural evolution of particular spaces, such as a gardener adding new bulbs or birds depositing seeds. They symbolize the nature of seasons and life cycles, emphasizing a relationship that is simultaneously enduring and ephemeral. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Through atmospheric, black-and-white photographs, Yamamoto Masao explores the emotional connections between image and memory. His intimate, otherworldly gelatin silver prints evoke dreamlike archival footage that has been somehow unyoked from the normal rhythms of time. His subjects vary, although he often focuses on landscapes and natural subjects, including a number of owls that roost in trees near his home in Japan.

Ten Owls at Yancey Richardson marks the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery, showcasing intimate portraits of the nocturnal birds. No larger than 10 inches on the longest side, these images are intended to be viewed up close in a way that brings these elusive creatures much nearer to us than we ever experience in the wild.

Often peering directly at the camera, their alert, sage, sometimes wary or candid looks evoke a sense of emotional connection. Each avian is an expressive protagonist, with the deep blacks and soft edges of Yamamoto’s prints inviting reflection and empathy.

Over time, the impact of development in the countryside where Yamamoto lives has drawn his attention to these winged, woodland denizens. “Owls have always been a familiar presence to me,” Yamamoto says. “However, as the number of people living in the forest grew, those with no interest in the laws of nature began clearing the trees. Sadly, the owls’ perches are vanishing. Even so, when I hear their faint hooting echoing from somewhere in the distance, I feel a sense of peace.”

Ten Owls opens on April 16 and continues through May 22 in New York. See more on Masao’s Instagram.

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Throughout Southeast Asia, nymph-like, shape-shifting deities associated with clouds and water known as apsaras are commonly depicted in sculptures and other artworks dating back millennia. For San Francisco-based artist Anoushka Mirchandani, who was born in India, these mythological beings are the spirits, so to speak, of vibrant oil paintings.

Tapping into family memories and her upbringing influenced by South Asian cultural traditions, Mirchandani explores mythology and perception. Her current solo exhibition, My Body Was A River Once at ICA San José, explores the tradition of the apsara through a lens of timelessness, femininity, and biophilia. Curated by Zoë Latzer, the show emphasizes the dynamic between power and vulnerability, exemplified by Mirchandani’s approach to the figures’ presence and ease amid the unpredictability of nature.

As a child, Mirchandani observed apsaras in the ancient Buddhist caves of Ajanta and Ellora. “These water-women are beings of transformation, embodying sensuality, cosmic energy, and the transmission of matrilineal knowledge,” says an exhibition statement.

In the paintings, figures are at one with their surroundings, virtually faceless with the exception of shadows that suggest lips and noses. The outlines of their bodies merge with tropical plants, moss, boulders, and flowing streams, and their flesh is partly transparent. Additionally, the underpainting of each work comprises a terracotta red, inspired by the clay-rich soil of the Indian states of Goa and Maharashtra. Starting with this earthy pigment literally grounds Mirchandani’s compositions in a sense of home and belonging.

My Body Was A River Once continues through August 23. See more on Mirchandani’s Instagram.

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Blown wildly out of proportion in large format, the slime molds that British photographer Barry Webb captures seem atmospheric and sculptural. Stemonitis, for example, looks like dozens of thin pieces of wire with their ends coated in colored wax. But this fungi-like form is one of hundreds of kinds of slime mold, and it typically only reaches a height of about two centimeters at the most. Thanks to Webb’s macro photos, we glimpse a phenomenally beautiful world up-close that is otherwise virtually invisible.

Scientists have documented hundreds of these organisms, which aren’t actually related to plants, fungi, animals, or molds—despite the name. They comprise a unique group unto themselves, more closely related to amoebas. And new discoveries are being made all the time. From mottled gray bulbs that look like snow-covered trees to pink, coral-like tendrils, Webb chronicles a huge array of colors and shapes. He also consistently submits images to local and national botanical records so that researchers have access to high-resolution imagery.

Webb’s image of a species called Lamproderma scintillans, partly engulfed by a water droplet, won the Botanical Britain category of the British Wildlife Photography Awards. Several of his photos are on display in large format in the exhibition Mythos Wald at Gasometer Oberhausen in Germany, which continues through the end of the year. And in the U.K., see Webb’s awarded images in the 2026 International Garden Photographer of the Year exhibition at Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Find more on his Instagram.

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David Morrison continues his hyperrealistic explorations of flowers, seeds, and plants, capturing the intricacies and alluring textures found throughout nature in lush colored pencil. Delicate, fine lines and smooth gradients prevail in the artist’s drawings, which present the organic subject matter as if it were bathed in light. Rendered in a soft haze, shadows of individual fronds and nodes add a deceptive sense of depth to the two-dimensional works.

The pieces shown here are some of Morrison’s latest, and you can find more on his Instagram and via Garvey | Simon, where he’s represented.

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When photographer Frank Relle was nine years old, he remembers sneaking out of the house he grew up in in New Orleans just before daybreak to catch the sunrise—an event he found frustratingly difficult to explain to others, as much as he wished to share the experience. It was only years later that he discovered the camera, and he reflects on this time now through the lens of an excerpt from the essay “Between Yes and No” by Albert Camus: “A man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.”

Relle adds, “The swamp was that opening for me. I do not fully understand how. I went in once, and something happened; I changed, and then I kept going back.” The New Orleans-based photographer still returns to the swamps of Louisiana, watched over by bald cypress trees draped in ethereal swathes of Spanish moss. He canoes onto the calm waters, capturing the transition between day and night amid the sounds of birds and other creatures that make their homes there.

“I work in the swamp because it returns me to a way of being that feels older, quieter, and more true,” Relle tells Colossal, continuing:

Out there, surrounded by trees, insects, birds, reflections, and dark water, I stop living inside the noise of my own mind. The swamp pulls me out of the island of myself and places me back inside a larger living world. In that state, I feel wonder, connection, and a kind of freedom. Photography became my way of sharing that feeling—not by explaining it but by inviting others into it.

Relle’s series Until the Water explores Louisiana’s otherworldly bayous through a lens of serene reverence. He places lights beneath boughs and trunks, illuminating trees against darkening horizons to emphasize their billowing shapes amid expansive wetlands distinctive to the Gulf Coast region of North America.

Time is both evident and seemingly suspended in Relle’s photos, as within the context of a single day ending or beginning, we observe mature cypresses that may have weathered hundreds of years. (The oldest known living tree in eastern North America is a bald cypress in North Carolina that’s more than 2,600 years old.) Some of the trees are abundantly leafy and full, while others are bare, struggling, or cracked open.

“The swamp at two in the morning is not quiet; it is one of the loudest places I have ever been,” Relle says. “But a photograph of it is silent. And in that silence, there is an opening. A threshold….That is what I wanted when I was small, watching the sky change. Not to describe it. To bring someone else to the edge of it. To share it without words.”

Find more on Relle’s Instagram, and purchase prints in his online shop. And if you’re in New Orleans, visit his brick-and-mortar gallery on Royal Street.

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Like a miniature chapel with enough space for one person to stand comfortably, Judith Schaechter’s glowing installation, “Super/Natural,” invites viewers to reflect on nature. An exhibition of the same name just opened at Claire Oliver Gallery and pays homage to biophilia, a theory positing that humans seek connections with nature through an innate attraction. Schaechter celebrates this propensity with a cornucopia of florals, insects, birds, and other imaginative organic forms.

“The vernacular of stained glass is one of worship and mythology,” Schaechter says. “Super/Natural turns this a bit on its head, creating a secular sanctuary for contemplating beauty, nature, and our relationship to it.” The sculpture, which comprises 65 panes and took nearly two years to complete, is topped with a small geodesic dome and stands about eight feet tall.

“Super/Natural” came about partly as a result of Schaechter’s residency at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics, which focuses on a sub-discipline of cognitive neuroscience concerned with how the brain processes aesthetic experiences. The artist attended lab meetings with researchers and scientists and was influenced by explorations into the “relationships between art, beauty, morality, and the brain,” the gallery says.

“My goal is to invite viewers into a deeply personal, immersive experience that explores the connections between self, nature, and imagination,” Schaechter adds in a statement. “We are ultimately connected to—not just observing—nature.”

Super/Natural continues through May 23 in Harlem. Find more on the artist’s Instagram, along with insights into her research and process on her blog.

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Jan Erik Waider has a knack for capturing shorelines, volcanic eruptions, and glaciers at their most mesmerizing—shrouded in mist, glowing in the darkness, or illuminated by pale northern light. His atmospheric photographs of icy seas and rugged landscapes from Iceland to the Antarctic, focus on dramatic forms and cast remote places into a dreamy ethereality.

Most recently, Waider captured a striking phenomenon in the Baltic Sea, just off the coast of northern Germany. Fresh ice formed a thin layer on the rolling surface, creating faceted, polygon-like shapes that moved gently and rhythmically with the waves without breaking apart.

Waider’s aerial drone perspective creates an otherworldly, almost totally abstract effect. At first glance, it appears as though it could be a minimalist animation highlighting the interactions between water, light, and motion. “Soft evening light, fine crack lines, and shifting tones from warm gold to deep green turned this fleeting moment into a study of structure, depth, and calm,” Waider says.

See more on Waider’s YouTube channel, Instagram, and Behance.

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Along with its reputation as the driest and lowest national park in the U.S., Death Valley is also one of the hottest places on Earth. It holds the air temperature record of 134 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded in 1913. But in spite of its macabre name, Death Valley is anything but lifeless. And over the past couple of weeks, a rare “superbloom” demonstrates just how vivacious it can be.

For photographer Dr. Elliot McGucken, who focuses on landscapes and nature, the visual cacophony of wildflowers foregrounding the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes or dramatic mountains like Telescope Peak are an endless source of fascination. Death Valley’s predominant flower displays are magenta and yellow—Phacelia and Desert Gold, respectively. There are also Mojave Stars, Brown-eyed Primrose, Five Spot, Sand Verbena, Brittlebush, and the uniquely named Gravel Ghost.

McGucken was photographing at Yellowstone National Park when he learned that Death Valley had experienced record rainfall over the past few months and was primed for a superbloom. Not wanting to miss it, as they only happen occasionally—the last ones occurred in 2016, 2005, and 1998—he drove to California. “As nature photographers, we’re oft waiting for those ‘hell yes’ moments to pack up and move out, and this was a ‘hell yes’ moment!” McGucken says. “I traveled from minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit to over 90 degrees in a day!”

At the beginning of March, Death Valley National Park announced it was experiencing its best superbloom in a decade. At lower elevations, the wildflowers blossom in early March, and depending the weather, can last until mid-month. At higher elevations, wildflowers bloom from April to June, depending on the altitude.

“While I had photographed a smaller bloom in the Panamint Valley back in 2024, I had never seen so much greenery in the lower parts of the park, from Stovepipe Wells to the Mesquite Dunes to Furnace Creek to Badwater,” McGucken says. “I have been photographing for the last few days, making the most of the once-in-decade event.”

The photos here were taken over the course of several days, including March 16. While the superbloom is now considered past peak, there are still some displays in certain areas of the park. See more on McGucken’s Instagram, and purchase prints on his website.

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For Chris Perani, the most diminutive details—the kind that are virtually impossible to see with the naked eye—are an endless source of wonder. His ongoing series, Wings, focuses on the prismatic effect of insects’ anatomy in what he describes as “extreme macro.” The images reveal details we’d otherwise only be able to see clearly beneath a microscope, and a meticulous process illuminates undulating, scaled surfaces that resemble chromatic pixels, stained glass, or even beadwork.

Perani uses special lenses that magnify objects up to 10 times, but he also takes up to 2,000 carefully measured shots of each specimen. He then digitally stacks them to achieve incredible clarity and dimension. Each high-resolution image is captured at 10-micron intervals—a distance shorter than the width of a human hair—so precision is paramount.

The organic architecture of bees’ wings, plus those of wasps, damselflies, beetles, and butterflies, illustrates the precision of their anatomy and the way a prism of hues is produced by both pigmentation and structural color, like iridescence.

“With many of these insects, light completely changes the result,” Perani says. “Bees, for example, often have wings that appear dark and colorless at first glance. But when light hits them at exactly the right angle, thin-film interference suddenly reveals remarkable colors, textures, and intricate structures across the wing’s surface, turning what first appears dark into a delicate fabric of light and structure.”

See more on Perani’s Instagram.

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