Tag Archives | native plants

Find the Photo – Leading Lines

Native plant gardens tend to be hard to photograph.  Often the gardeners care more about the plants and habitat than the aesthetics.  This is perfectly OK – unless you are trying to photograph them.

We need better photographs of native plant gardens to encourage those gardeners who DO care about aesthetics, who want to do the right thing by way of sustainability, and don’t realize how beautiful natives can be.  To encourage more native plant gardening I have set out to find more gardens, and the photos within. Continue Reading →

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Spring unfolding – Focus Point

It’s wildflower season !  Grab you camera (and tripod), some sturdy shoes, sunblock , a bottle of water, and go study what is unfolding in nature.  The miracles become all the more fantastic by examining the wonder in the details.

A macro lens is essential for studying nature close up.  It will allow close focusing so you can fill your frame with the flower, leaf, or bug; and with a dedicated macro lens, as opposed to a point and shoot with macro capability, you can get some very special photos. Continue Reading →

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Wild Garden Photos

Autumn pond - Proctorsville, VermontLast month, while our Gardening Gone Wild readers were out shooting for the Fill the Frame theme in our Picture This photo contest, I was on vacation in New England – I was filling my camera frame with fall color in Vermont and the landscapes of poet Mary Oliver in Cape Cod, such as Blackwater Pond:

Blackwater Pond, Cape Cod National Seashore

Funny thing though, while I was ostensibly on holiday from my work as a garden photographer I saw all the wild landscapes as gardens.  God’s gardens to be sure, but I saw them defined by earthly designs. Continue Reading →

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Prairie Delights part 2

I am supposed to editing all the photos I took of gardens while I was in Minnesota working with Evelyn Hadden on her “Lose Your Lawn” book.   But I just can’t get those prairies off my mind.

Crow-Hassan Prairie Reserve

I do promise to bring this post back around to garden photography at the end.  This is a gardening blog after all.  Framing and composition are the theme today.  No matter what sort of landscape we photograph, our own garden or God’s, composition may be the most important element in deciding what we want to say, in what we want the viewer not to see. Continue Reading →

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Prairie Delights

Just back from Minnesota where I was shooting for a new book with fellow Lawn Reform Coalition member Evelyn Hadden, and spent my free time looking for prairies.  OMG!  OMG,  O-M-G . . .

Crow-Hassan Park, prairie reserve

The Crow-Hassan Park Reserve is part of Three Rivers Park District, a regional park for the Minneapolis area.  I did not expect to find beautiful wild prairie so close to the city, I was completely prepared to drive hours into the wild.  The reality of native prairie though, is that there are no big expanses of prairies left, so you are just as likely to find a small remnant near a city as you are next to a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Continue Reading →

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