Tas-Saff Saffron commissioned me to photograph their 2014 saffron harvest in preparation for a major website upgrade and expansion of their business. While on a location survey I was given a crocus bulb and told that in several weeks it would flower, even out of soil. I decided that this was going to be the major image of the campaign.

As forecast, the bulb began to sprout, and then flower. I set it up on white marble in a sunny window in my studio and recorded a 3000 frame time-lapse of the flower opening over a period of 3 hours. The flower was stunningly beautiful, flaunting it's bright red stigma sexily against the brilliant violet petals. Several days later, a second flower emerged and I captured a second time-lapse sequence on black marble, then a series of still frames on my 80MP Phase One IQ280 medium format system. This is the result.

As luck would have it, due to the weather the harvest this year was abysmal. In a good year 400,000 flowers would spectacularly appear in a day to be hand harvested. The harvest was successful, but not the hoped for display of colour. So the still images came to the fore for the website upgrade.