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Photographing foliage

A garden photograph is not simply a landscape photo taken in a garden. It should communicate something about gardening, something that enlarges the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of gardens.

This photo of fresh emerging, nearly chartreuse foliage of Rhododendron hyperythrum is a fine landscape photo, a nice leaf pattern with a sense of vibrant young leaves unfolding, but it says little about gardening. True, part of the reason we take photos is simply to share the beauty of plants and the wonder we see, but I challenge my students to “think like a gardener” and find a photo that goes deeper than that. Continue Reading →

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From the seventeenth century

Godolphin House in Cornwall, is a relatively recent National Trust acquisition. A great house until the 17th century when the money began to run out, it never got ‘modernized’ by Capability Brown or his cohorts, so retains old formal features. Previous owners popped in the old rose bush and tree peony but little else, or at least not much else has survived a period of neglect. The primroses have gone mad as they do in Cornwall, self-seeding everywhere, loving the wet, the mild winters and cool summers which gives them the long growing season they like; truly a flower of the Atlantic fringe, where the weather is remarkably similar through the year. This is a pavement of stones set into the ground. For some reason primroses flourish here better than grass.

Why the odd pink one I don’t know. Possibly because primroses-gone-wild in gardens have some genes left over from crossing with garden polyanthus. Seems pretty universal in ‘feral’ populations. Continue Reading →

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Hard Light – Back Light

There was a time when I would never shoot in harsh, hard light. Bright, strong, contrasty light tends to have deep, black shadows and no color subtlety. As a garden photographer, when the sun came into the garden I would retreat to the shadows where the light was soft.

But I am also a California garden photographer and the sun is an important element of many a garden’s story. People expect to see sunny California gardens, and when a photo can manage to show some bright sun somewhere in the picture, the scene will glow. Continue Reading →

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Picture This – Winter Trees

Click photo then click again to see larger

Our loyal readers know “Picture This” has been a popular Gardening Gone Wild photo contest over the years, where we invite professional garden photographers to pick a theme and hand out awards. It has been a great way for readers to learn together and link their contest photo in their own blogs to the GGW community of garden photographers.

Well, the contest is a lot of work for us and our our guest photographers, so it needs to evolve. Rather than simply discontinue the fun, it will run occasionally with our in-house professional garden photographer – me. As I develop my e-book on garden photography I will post how-to lessons under the Picture This category, and invite anyone to post their own interpretation of the lesson on their own blog and link it to GGW, where I would urge each contestant to go and comment.

As a group each of the students will be able to learn from the collective critique and I will do my best to offer follow-up critique myself as time allows. This is a bit of an experiment as I decide what works and how students learn. Continue Reading →

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