This month we welcome guest Suu Phyo, who many of you know as @suump on Instagram. I follow her for my daily dose of flower beauty. But hers are not simply flower photos — they seem to be lit within — they glow and radiate beauty. Suu brings flowers to life so that we can experience them too, as if we were walking right along with her and experiencing them as she does. She lives in Denver, Colorado. You can see more of her work on IG and also on flickr.

I’ve always found flowers to be magical. As a child I loved spending time with my mother picking wildflowers growing in the wild grass fields alongside runways of the air force base where I grew up. We would gather the most beautiful ones and place them in all corners of the house, arranged in every vase we owned, they looked so professional like the ones made at floraqueen! They’ve gotten so big they even send flowers worldwide now, maybe if I start up my own flower shop I could become as successful as they are. Anyways, those days have long gone, and I am now living in a city tens of thousands of miles away from the place I once called home. Nevertheless, every time I see a beautiful flower at a roadside, at a florist, on a neighbor’s fence, or when my work put in weekly flowers to spruce the place up, I sometimes still feel as if I am a child about to go out to pick a flower or two.

Along the way, I have picked up a passion, photography. As a photographer, I try to capture and freeze moments and things around me as much as I can. I have shot many subjects over the years and realized that many of them were flowers. Their spectacular details, vibrant colors and delicate petals always fascinate and intrigue me.

In 2014, my husband and I moved to Denver from New York. In our new community, there is a beautiful lake with a tree-lined path around it, and mountain views in the background. Ever since I started living in this new place, I take my daily walk around the lake to enjoy the scenery and gaze at the seasonal wildflowers growing and swaying in the breeze. With that, it seems my fascination with flowers is replenished and accelerated again.

I now take photos of flowers daily and realize that doing so makes my days even brighter. Sometimes, I take my walk in the Denver Botanical Garden and enjoy taking pictures of seasonal flowers there. Adding to that, every weekend, I visit the farmer’s market or Trader’s Joe and grab what catches my eye, and fill my home with fresh flowers as I did in my childhood.

A few months back, I started a project called “Finding Flowers.” I only had a simple goal with that project: to take photos of flowers I see in in my day to day life. One day I would take a picture of flowers on my table. Next day I may pull over and take a shot of sunflowers growing along the roadside. A day after, I might be taking a photo of poppies from the Botanical Garden. Over time this project has become even more meaningful to me because I have learned from it that by taking a moment to pay attention to simple and small things, be it a flower at the roadside or on a Trader Joe’s shelf, my day may becomes brighter with memories of the flower-loving child once I was. Now I am sharing a few of the flowers that I enjoyed in the hope that you might like them too.

We want YOU to Be Our Guest! Post your images on Instagram with the hashtag #viewsfindersio_beourguest or leave a comment below with a link to your best images. You could be our next guest and have the opportunity to share your photographic vision with us.

See you soon.

—lucy