Art Drop #26: Less is More

Revisiting our diffusion box to make art out of milkweed.

Somehow we have completed a year in our new home in western Massachusetts. Being here through four seasons we thought we’d seen all the major milestones in our meadow. As a wild area, it’s always going to evolve – seeds on the wind or from the digestive tract of a bird or mammal will find a way to present something new – but one surprise we had not anticipated was seeing milkweed in bloom.

Last year, arriving when we did, the milkweed was just a green plant amongst a sea of other green plants. In the fall, the milkweed dried up and looked like some kind of weird land-based crustacean breeding ground. I see shrimp, don’t you?

Milkweed Shrimp in fall.

But being here through spring and early summer has allowed us to see how the meadow wakes up and absolutely revels under repeated lashings of both rain and sun. In front of our eyes these lush and succulent milkweed plants have developed on the fringes of the meadow and they are now flowering. Just two weeks ago the milkweed looked like this:

Milkweed on 6/13/2025.

Now it looks like this:

Milkweed on 7/1/2025.

Inevitably I felt the pull to document this peerless pollinator plant in its prime, but photographs like those above weren’t hitting the mark for me.

Sometimes less is more. It was time to break out the diffusion box.

The Diffusion Box

Originally constructed late last summer for Art Drop #17, the diffusion box was essentially the sum of construction materials + inspiration. You can read all about it in Art Drop #17: Meadow's End if you like. Since then, it was disassembled – we urgently needed a box to form a makeshift “living room” for the school rabbit when she came to visit, and from our 7-year old’s perspective rabbits take priority over art. So it needed some repairs, but those were easy enough. We attached Aunty Dil’s blanket once again and took it out.

The diffusion box, still adorned with the stickers and scribbles of a child but now also featuring some stains from the secretions of a young rabbit.

A box with legs walking through the meadow.

Iterating on what works, and what doesn’t.

Art Drop #26

Using the diffusion box is an evolving process of trial and error. The parameters at play are the light (does the subject need to be backlit or not, in full sun or shade), the distance from the plastic to the subject, and the structure and height of the plant. Physical discomfort plays a role too. It’s hot inside the box and annoying insects love to venture inside and crawl around on my composition. For Diana in her assistant role of supporting the box exactly where I need it and preventing light leaks, she contends with deer flies and baking sunlight. It’s not a fun time, but we enjoy collaborating out in the meadow.

There’s a sweet spot to be found when making photographs with the diffusion box, and I think for this piece below all the myriad of factors came together in a harmonious way.

Diffused Milkweed
West Stockbridge, MA, USA
by Tom Bland

Prints of this photograph are only available through July 7, 2025 with no further production of this work for at least a year. To learn more, order a print, or request a larger size click the button below to visit the art drop page on our website.

We have one 5 x 7” print to giveaway to the first person who steps forward to request it (Update: this has now been claimed), and all orders receive a free homemade zine. Yes, you heard that correctly! More on that in our next newsletter…

Until the next time, thanks for reading!

Tom

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