Tag Archives | trees

Vantage Point – Looking Up

norfolk island pine, Sometimes we photographers get stuck.  We are out looking for photos and just can’t seem to find anything special.  Often, seeing the garden is just a matter of slowing down and thinking about what it is that excites us.  Other times we just need to shake up our point of view.

As you look around, try looking up, straight up, especially if you have trees.  Photos underneath, looking up, give a sense of majesty.  They force you and the viewer to re-think scale and dimension.

Recently I have been preparing for an exhibit of prehistoric plants at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers and looking for images that, when blown up 10 feet tall, will make the visitors feel they are enveloped in a new environment. Continue Reading →

Comments { 12 }

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 →

Comments { 4 }

Bare Trees

Winter’s stark beauty.  Color vanishes from the landscape.  Bare trees dominate the garden.

 

Valley Oak tree bare branches

Valley Oak - Quercus lobata

On cloudy overcast days, the somber gray sky can become a clean white background, perfect for silhouettes with just a little bit of camera manipulation.  You can override your camera meter’s calibration which is designed to read each scene as a neutral gray. Continue Reading →

Comments { 15 }