Donegal is a land in bloom: physically; culturally; spiritually. Look at the three stages of this clover, each picked at the same time from right outside our door. Am I fanciful to imagine a trinitarian analogy in the group of flower heads?

The four-leaf clover is known the world over as a sign of good luck. At the time, this image was created for a good luck card for a very dear person. In the image were invested all our poignant hopes for fecundity in abundance.

The flowers and leaves were arranged on the scanner glass and two passes were made: reflective and transmitted light scans, which were then floated together in Photoshop with varying transparency settings. The fourth leaf (you didn't think, even for one minute, did you...?) was cloned and transformed on one layer only so it appeared to be occluded by the stalks. No camera was used. How digital is that??!!

If you haven't discovered the joys of Photoshop yet, don't be put off by the apparent complexity of method here, and elsewhere on the site in the "release notes", for the whole process above, from picking the flowers to printing out the card from Quark XPress, took only 20 mins. And no remixes since, either. So once you're up to speed in software like this, it becomes an extension of your mind's eye, and its also true to say that there is never just one way of achieving a certain result either, so one person would quite naturally develop a separate distinct style to the next.