Flower Cards

Flower cards (Hanafuda cards) are traditional Japanese playing cards usually decorated with intricate floral and seasonal imagery rather than numbers or suits as you'd find on western playing cards.

As with most decks of cards, you can use Hanafuda cards to play a range of different games with the most popular being Koi-Koi, Sakura and Hana Awase.

Huff No More recently released their own deck of Hanafuda cards, inspired by the grasses, wildlife and weather(!) of the British Isles and I got a chance to shoot them just after Sakana Stack.

Focus on the Cards

Hanafuda cards are well known for their artistic presentation, usually featuring wonderfully illustrated scenes reflecting traditional Japanese aesthetics and symbolism.

The Flower Cards deck is no different, having be beautifully illustrated by Joss Petchey, and I wanted this to be a real focus of the shoot.

It was also important to make sure the scene was right for these cards, given the theme of nature and the calm outdoors runs throughout them. Having anything other than the cards set in nature, softly light by a late afternoon sun in spring, would not have created the kind of feeling I wanted these cards to evoke.

Don't Forget, They're Also Playing Cards Too

But we shouldn't forget these are also cards that people can play games with, even while they're admiring the intricate art work. I'll be honest, before shooting Flower Cards I had never head of Koi-Koi or Sakura before, and Hanafuda was a relatively new term to me as well.

So we needed to make sure players could see those games being played, even if they might not know how the games themselves play, to ensure players knew these were more than a collectors item.

The mix of photos was great, some showing off the artwork and others capturing key parts of gameplay - Huff No More

As with the card focus shots, I wanted these images to feel relaxing, to feel as though it's a game you would play on a lazy summer afternoon. So keeping the light soft, and ensuring a subtle haze throughout the images gives that relaxed, reseted feel you'd have after a Sunday in the sun.

Bringing Nature Indoors

Shooting products outdoors is not easy (I've done it before and it's a challenge) and I knew the set up for each photo would take a while, so even if I found the right spot, at the right time of day, with the right greenary, the time between shots would mean the light would constantly be changing and I'd be chasing my tail.

This is easily solved if you have full control of the lighting, which I do indoors, so a quick trip around the village to cut some seasonal wild flowers and leaves and we have our very own self-contained nature scene.

Yes, that is copious amounts of sellotape to keep the leaves in place!