I am a light stalker with my camera. Finding the best time and the best light to photograph a garden factors into every shoot. These days I am challenging myself to bring sunlight into my photographs.
Tag Archives | native plants
September Favorites
Text and photos © Catherine Renzi
Many September gardens are waning, preparing for dormancy after festive summer partying with exciting colors and fragrances. But, September is also a time of new beginnings; Autumn begins in September, and a new academic year begins for students of all ages. For me, each year begins anew with my September birthday. Continue Reading →
Green Roof Photos
When the new California Academy of Sciences re-opened last year in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the green roof was a big story with its central design concept-”lifting up a piece of the park and put a building under it”.
Green roof Academy of Sciences
I was eager to photograph it but could not get permission to walk out on the roof beyond the observation deck because I was not working on any real story. I just wanted to get some cool photos of the 2.5 acre native plant meadow on a roof, having just completed my meadow book and loving California native plants. Alas, there were so many requests for photo access to the roof, I was told quite politely to come back when I had a better excuse.
Now I am working on a project (about alternatives to lawn) and the publisher specifically asked for photos of Cal Academy’s roof. Visions of bright sunny meadows and colorful wildflowers danced in my head. The day I scheduled was typical San Francisco mid-summer fog - really foggy. Continue Reading →
What I Learned on My Summer Vacation – Part Two
In Part One, I covered some highlights of the first day of the Native Plants in the Landscape Conference, which was held at Millersville University in Millersville, PA from June 4 through June 6. Here are some more of my notes and ramblings from the other two days (again, lots of text and not many photos; sorry!). Continue Reading →
What I Learned on My Summer Vacation
Finding time to get away during the growing season is almost impossible, but there’s one yearly event that I hate to miss: the Native Plants in the Landscape Conference held at Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvania. This year, rainy weather made the whole event more enjoyable, because I didn’t have to feel guilty about not being out in the garden or worry about plants not getting watered. Even if it had been perfect gardening weather, though, I wouldn’t have regretted a minute spent indoors, because the entire conference was packed with great speakers and events. I took lots of notes, and I thought I’d share some of the highlights. You know how challenging it can be to take notes in a dark room, so if there are mistakes in here, blame me and not the speakers. (Well, I suppose you could blame them for giving so much good information so quickly that I might have missed or misunderstood some stuff.) Warning: text-heavy post ahead. Continue Reading →
