Esther (@esthers_eyes on Instagram) is a nature enthusiast from the Netherlands. Esther specialises in macro photography and has a particular interest in floral photography, which is where her excellent understanding of colour science and her talent with a camera combine to produce beautiful images of flowers and foliage. Esther has also become a beloved member of the ‘bpa’ (blissful photo art) community on Instagram. Esther owns the community page: @blissful.photo.art and is a curator for the page: @bpa_nature_.

We found Esther to be an incredibly kind and humble person. Her beautiful photography, combined with her love and passion for the macro and nature online community, makes her a great role model and source of inspiration in our eyes! We wish Esther all the best in her future and look forward to following her on her journey.

We hope you enjoy the interview!

Hello Esther, thank you for doing this interview with us! When did you first pick a camera, and when did you start taking your photography seriously?

Thank you for having me, Jamie! It’s an honour for me. I picked up a camera for the first time when I was in 6th grade when I was given mums old point-and-shoot camera. In 2004 I bought my first SLR, it worked with film. It was a Minolta, and I was very proud of it! In 2006 I bought my first DSLR, a Pentax K100D, and that’s when I started to photograph a lot more. The Pentax I used until 2018! I’ve also always owned a digital point-and-shoot camera’; I used that camera a lot too. When smartphones came into existence, my point-and-shoot’ cameras retired.

I was always looking for compositions and things that attracted me. I always wanted to take photos or create drawings of the things that fascinated me so that I could share their beauty with anyone who wanted to see them. 

The Netherlands is quite famous for its love of flowers. So many streets in your cities and towns are covered in them. The Netherlands is also the largest exporter of flowers in the world! Do you think that being brought up in this sort of culture and being surrounded by flowers your whole life has played a major role in becoming a flora, and especially floral focused photographer?

Yes, that’s true! We’re a real flower-loving country. I suppose it played a role because I have always looked and still look at what’s happening in my environment, which has definitely influenced me. I think that my late grandma played a large role as well. She always had a big garden filled with flowers and trees. She definitely had a green thumb when it came to growing flowers and gardening. I remember always being very impressed by all the colours, shapes and scents. I think my love for flowers started there; in my grandma’s flower garden.

I have always loved nature and animals. I’ve always been fascinated by all nature’s colours, patterns, smells and unique and diverse animals. 

That sounds so lovely! My grandma was the same and always had a colourful and beautiful garden. Do you have a favourite place to go for floral photography? Your local park or a friend's garden, for example?

Yes, I’m fortunate to have a flower garden nearby! It’s an ‘insect garden’ where you can learn a lot about bees. It’s not a huge garden, but it’s the most beautiful garden I have ever seen, besides my grandma’s garden, of course! I’m always going there between late April and early August. When it’s Spring, I always go to a forest nearby. On my way to the forest, I also go by a beautiful lane with blossoming trees. I always park my car there to photograph those. And of course, I’m always growing flowers in my own little garden. In wintertime, when there are no flowers, I’m just buying flowers to bring colour into my house and to photograph them. 

It’s always lovely to bring colour into one’s living space. Your photos are so vibrant and beautiful! How much time do you spend playing around with the colours when editing? How do you get them (the colours) to 'pop'?

Thank you! Since colours have always been significant to me, I spend the most time on colour grading while editing. But everything starts with the photography when I’m playing with compositions and familiarizing myself with the colours in each photo. I’m always paying attention to my subjects' light and surroundings so that they look their best and colours already pop a little in the unedited photo. I like to use contrast while shooting, for example, a colourful flower against a dark background, and of course, I’m always using wide apertures. As wide as possible, for macro photography, f/4.0 is also wide! 

What editing software do you use? Do you use any apps as well?

I’m editing my photos in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop. I mostly use Lightroom to organise everything, and I edit photos that don’t need a lot of editing there. When I want to use local adjustments, I’m editing in photoshop. My laptop is getting very slow otherwise. When my photo is finished, I’m exporting the photos that I want to post on Instagram to my phone with dropbox and sometimes I like tweaking them a little bit more in the Lightroom mobile app. 

Your images consistently appear to have a beautiful soft glow about them, especially in the backgrounds. Is there a trick to achieving that look?

I’m achieving that soft look by using an as wide as possible aperture and paying a lot of attention to my composition and my subjects' light and surroundings while photographing. I’m always trying to separate my subjects from their environment. This way, I don’t have to edit so much too. I’m always trying to get a good photo in-camera. This means that I usually only have to enhance the colours and softness when it comes to the editing stage.

What camera gear do you use? Does the type of camera and lens set-up you have play much of a role in affecting your ability to take good close-up photos?

I’m now using a Sony A7III, and my go-to lens is the Sigma 70mm macro ART lens. I also love my Sony 85mm f/1.8 lens as it has beautiful soft bokeh. I sometimes pair my 85mm lens with a macro filter to come closer to my subjects. When using a macro filter with that lens, I’m achieving a dreamy look because the filter makes the lens ‘softer’. I have always liked my Lensbaby sweet 50 too, it’s a manual lens, and it’s a very creative little lens! I love it in particular because it creates unusual photos, and everything gets a painterly effect. I am, of course, pairing that lens with some macro converters as well. The gear I have now has definitely played a role as I had never owned a dedicated macro lens before. When I still had my Pentax, I mostly used a 50mm lens. I captured some beautiful photos with that camera and lens set up as well, though. I think the saying ‘the best camera is the one that’s with you’ is very true! But the quality of that sigma lens and the extra MP of my camera are definitely helping to make everything easier. (My Pentax only had 6MP!). 

Could you offer any advice to those wanting to improve their floral photography? Do you have any particular rules that you set yourself and follow when you are taking photos?

My advice is to pay a lot of attention to compositions, light, and the flower's surroundings you want to photograph. You should also take your time whilst photographing! Flowers and plants are perfect models…. they are extremely patient! And, of course, practice a lot and enjoy the process. Don’t forget to appreciate all the beautiful colours and shapes.

It’s also a good idea to look through the photos you’ve made while you’re still in the process of photographing your subject; maybe you’ll notice that some are out of focus or that the composition is not right. Then you can go back to try again. It’s also a good idea to move around a lot; this allows you to experiment with taking photos of the same subject from different angles and with different settings. As a beginner, it’s also helpful to take photos in different light settings to learn what effect different light has on your photos. 

You are also the owner of @blissful.photo.art. Can you talk a little bit about that? What was your motivation behind creating this page? How long have you had it for? Do you have any plans for its future?

I created @blissful.photo.art in August 2018. In 2017 and I took over @bpa_nature_ and @bpa_macro from a woman I met on Instagram. She was looking for new owners of her pages. @bpa_nature_ and @bpa_macro belonged to a bigger group of hubs many years ago. But they went their own way. So after I started curating those two pages, I’ve always wanted to give a new meaning to ‘bpa’. And I always wanted to create a hub for portraits, still life, fine art and child photography (so a wider variety than the macro and nature hub). So that was when Blissful Photo Art was born! I’m not curating @bpa_macro anymore, but I still have @bpa_nature_ and, of course, @blissful.photo.art.

I’ve met many wonderful people through those pages, and I think/hope that a lot of people have found inspiration and new accounts to follow because of them. In the future, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve been doing with it until now: featuring beautiful accounts, I’m always on the lookout for new talent! I’m consciously trying to support new accounts as well, there’s so much talent on Instagram! I don’t want to be a page that only features big accounts so that the posts get a lot of likes; I just want to feature beautiful posts and talented creatives. 

There are so many amazing photographers putting their work out there on platforms such as Instagram. How do you think you were able to stand out and grow multiple pages in such a competitive environment and niche? What are some points that you have focused on, and what has been your attitude towards Instagram?

Yes, honestly, I am still surprised that my own page and @blissful.photo.art grew so fast! I don’t think I did something special. I started my own page in 2017. I didn’t know anything about Instagram. Back then I didn’t even understand how tagging and hashtags worked! I didn’t understand what feature pages were, so I had to learn everything from scratch.

I have to say that I’ve always been fairly active on Instagram. I’m trying to respond to all comments, direct messages (only the dm’s that contain more than only one smiley etc) and I’m always scrolling through the explore page to find new accounts to follow and for inspiration. What helps too, I think, is posting consistently. That can mean [posting every day, every other day, or even just once a week. I think that if you can manage to keep to a schedule that it really helps a lot with growing on Instagram. There was a time when I posted daily on my own page and 2-3 times a day on my other pages… that was too much for me. I’m now posting 4 times a week on my own page. And on my other pages, I’m posting once a day maximum. I have noticed the posts are doing much better since I’m only featuring one artist a day. I think that three features a day were way too much; it also felt like I was spamming everyone! And one feature a day is extra special! 

Where does your creative inspiration come from? Do you have anyone in particular who inspires and motivates you in the photography world and also in general?

My inspiration comes from my surroundings. When I was little, I was always drawing, and when I got older, I was taking photos of everything I loved. I think I have always had a strong urge to document everything beautiful. I want to share what I see with everyone. That’s why I love the time we’re living in now, with the internet. It makes it easier to share your work with a lot of people.

Esther, it's been an absolute pleasure! Thank you so much for your time. Where can people go to follow your social media pages?

Thanks again for having me, Jamie! It was a pleasure for me too! I’m mostly active on Instagram: @esthers_eyes. 

I have accounts on Flickr, Tumblr, Vero and Pinterest as well. But I’m not very active on those platforms. My username on those platforms is ‘esthers_eyes’ as well. 

I’m also trying to be more active on Behance again; my username is ‘Esther Es’. 

*Online privacy is important for Esther, which is why her last name is not included in this interview. We understand and respect that and hope that you do too.

Stay Creative!