I discovered sunflowers for sale at a flower bazaar yesterday. I had been waiting for them to come back in stock for a variety of photo experiments – just like this. It’s not the most original concept, but it deserved revisiting.

Sunflowers have a black center, but just like the subtle green sheen on a raven’s feathers, the center of a sunflower is deeply and faintly blue. When you shine a flashlight directly at this black center, allowing only a small amount of light to spill off to the much-brighter petals, you can re-balance the colour profile in the resulting image to be blue and yellow.

I had used a dandelion seed as an ingredient in one of the first symbolic images I created in support of Ukraine, but with a single drop placed in the center. That was intentional – multiple droplets could convey a fractured country. In this case, multiple sunflowers refracting in these droplets is a different message entirely – multitudes of bright flowers splashing around the image. Most of the droplets are created with a spray bottle, but the center droplet is placed with a hypodermic needle. This image is dedicated to the Public Domain.

It's easy to feel like this war in Ukraine rages on in the distance, like white noise that you grow accustomed to and it can be ignored after a certain period of time. The next sensational news story takes over, and public attention shifts to other debates. Reality is quite different for people who have fled their country with lives in ruin. More than 12 million Ukrainians are believed to have fled their homes, and over a million have been forcibly deported to impoverished regions of Eastern Russia. Many children have been separated from their parents at “filtration camps” and may never be reunited.

I see verified accounts of war crimes emerging, but justice for such crimes will never be enough. This series of work will continue, and I have lost followers as a result of it. I have a backlog of other images to share when the time is right, but for now I would like to remind everyone that the worst crimes against humanity are happening at a scale that is barely within living memory.

Many people feel helpless. This is a reminder: you can help. Donate to charities, create artwork or music, write to politicians, buy things made in Ukraine, attend rallies, and voice your opinions. Where I grew up in Canada, there was a significant Ukrainian immigrant population, and Ukrainian community centres. If there is such a place around you, ask how you can help them – since they would certainly be involved in humanitarian aid in some way. We are doing the same with a Ukrainian cultural center here in Varna, though our funds are limited. We hope to do more car-loads of supplies soon, thanks to the incoming donations.

Back to photography for a moment: this image was taken with a new macro lens that has yet to be announced. It’s pretty solid. I’ll mentioned more about it when I can. There are a lot of projects happening behind the scenes over here that I can’t walk about just yet, some may be a long ways off. Stay tuned for future updates, and more blue & yellow imagery.