I’ve been making paper flowers again, and I came across some beautiful inspiration in the form of Leendert Blok‘s botanical images. Photographed over a century ago, his daffodils, hyacinths, dahlias, irises and gladiolas (to name a few) have an ethereal quality to them. Given how new colour photography was at the time, the richness of colour, texture and light really is astounding. It’s this blue parrot that took my breath away; wrinkled and fragile, snapped in an instant.