Tag Archives | photobotanic

Tools for flower photography

You have heard of farm to table ?  Here is garden to wall.

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I simply could not resist making a PhotoBotanic illustration of this Iris in my garden.  My studio was all set up from yesterday’s rose shoot and I wanted to practice photo stacking on a more complicated flower than a rose.  Off into the garden . . . an Iris in mind.

More on the photo stacking tool later, a method to get maximum depth of field in one photo by using multiple exposures.  But now, I am distracted by my subject.

I went looking for a big flower and I saw a magnificent stalk.  The day’s work got much longer.  I used another tool.  There is an illustration here that needs to be made. Continue Reading →

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Biomimicry – How Doing It Nature’s Way Will Change The Way We Live

The disappearance of a major natural unit of vegetation from the face of the earth is an event worthy of causing pause and consideration by any nation. Yet so gradually has the prairie been conquered by the breaking plow, the tractor, and the overcrowded herds of man…that scant attention has been given to the significance of this endless grassland or the course of its destruction.  Civilized man is destroying a masterpiece of nature without recording for posterity that which he has destroyed.  John Ernest Weaver, North American Prairie (1954)

How many of you grew up watching ‘Little House on the Prairie’ or reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series of books? The North American prairie is as American as apple pie and is an important part of our heritage.

Biomimicry - How Doing It Nature's Way Will Change The Way We Live

Photo courtesy of Saxon Holt/Photobotanic

Description of Photo – Fragrant Blue giant hyssop or Anise hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) and Gray-headed Coneflower, Pinnate Prairie Coneflower, (Ratibida pinnata) native perennials flowering in Crow-Hassan Park, prairie reserve.

Continue Reading →

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Photos in the Garden

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Wisteria on my entry gate April 2, 2013

Want a tip on how to take good garden pictures ?  Pick up your camera and go out into a garden.  You can’t get good pictures if you don’t take any pictures.  Put yourself in a position to make something happen.

April 2 was a day to take photos in my own garden.  It was overcast and still – a gift for a garden photographer.  A day to ignore computer deadlines and take pictures.  There have been too many times I regretted missing this sort of opportunity, and spring was calling. Continue Reading →

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Get Inside the Garden

Think Like a Gardener – Design and Shape.                                                                               The PhotoBotanic Garden Photography Workshop – Lesson 3.1

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The formal design of Filoli Garden fills the space with precision.

 

Finding your own style as a garden photographer begins with your own understanding of gardens. Think like the gardener within, then get inside the garden to find your photo.

This lesson in The PhotoBotanic Garden Photography Workshop is about Design and Space.  In earlier lessons we talked about design and space as it relates to the composition of a photograph, how to fill the camera frame (space) with a pleasing composition (design).  Here we look at the gardens themselves.  Now we will be looking at themes and assignments for you when you go out with the camera. Continue Reading →

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Appreciation and Mimicry

So far, in these lessons on garden photography, we have explored the rudiments of composition and light in making good garden photos.  In today’s lesson (1.4) we step back and begin to analyze why we take pictures so that we can begin to understand when to snap the shutter.

Let’s assume you are not content with simply documenting the garden – you want photos to share, not just jog your memory.  You will want to have something to say, a story to tell.  I hope it does not seem too obvious, but let’s start with appreciation and mimicry.  First, let’s show our appreciation of the wonder of gardens, then let’s try to find photos that might inform our own gardens with ideas we can mimic. Continue Reading →

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