Sky High

Early spring isn't the easiest time to shoot photos in the garden. The soil is still bare, leaf and winter debris still covers many spots. So, for inspiration one needs to get down on hands and knees and look across the ground or even upwards towards the sky.

The emerging tips of the Polygonatum variegatum (Variegated Solomon's Seal) poke upright unerringly bending towards the sun. We'll be potting up lots of these lovelies for our friends.

Hellebores are at their peak, if I was staying at this house I'd be buying more and more of these lovely perennials. Incredibly easy to maintain, stunning flowers, no diseases that I'm aware of, unedible to deer and other wildlife and beautiful foliage...who could ask for more?

This is my favorite shot from yesterday's photo shoot, and yes, I had to lie on the ground to take it. The Epemediums are just beginning to put on a show, one of their nicknames is "Turk's Cap".

Another Hellebore, this one is in such a tough location... barren soil, massive tree roots from a large Maple, no water during dry season and yet it's still blooming away.

Four or Five years ago a gardening friend gave me a few Hellebore seedlings which I put out back by the shed. This is the most beautiful one, thank you Mary Kay!

One more Epemedium here. In the next week or two I will have several more varieties open. Eventually I'll dedicate a post to this plant, it's well worth adding to your garden.

The Pulmonarias are also starting to shine, I'll be posting about them on Melanie's Perennials later this morning.

Fun with old slides

Today is cool and rainy. Since I had several meetings to attend during the day and yet another meeting this evening, there was no chance I was going to go out and get muddy in the middle of the afternoon.

Sitting here at my computer, going through my photo files, I decided to have some fun. With my last post I discovered that I could crop some old slides that I had scanned a few years ago. Here's some images I doctored a bit.

The first was a shot that I took to demonstrate the power of foliage and foliage combinations. Who needs flowers when you have this group?


What I loved about my old Nikon camera was the ability to manually focus where ever I want. I do realize that there are digital cameras with that capability too, just not in my budget right now.

My macro lens did a nice job getting me a close up of Corydalis lutea and the miniature Iris cristata 'Alba'.

Believe it or not, I grew Edelweiss (Leontopodium alpinium) in my garden for three years. I really, REALLY need to grow this plant once more in my life time. It was so cool!

Being able to crop and focus on a specific subject in the photo was fun. The original slide with these simple planted shoes never really had the right interest. Now I would definitely use it in a program about garden shoes (of which I have enough images to make a whole program!).

Last but not least (for those of you who are counting, I tend to put 5 photos in each post because that's the limit on one download) I added a cropped shot I took with my digital camera. At times (most of the time) the digital image still gives me more to work with. But, it's nice to know that I can sit here during the blah winter months ahead and have some fun cropping, editing and adding my old slides to new programs.

Now once I upload this post, I'll be coming back to see how the images actually look over the internet. What do you think?

The right angle

When taking photos of blooms in your gardens, there are many different angles from which you can shoot. The most common angle is head on, an "in your face" kind of shot.

This daylily is 'Lounge Lizard' by Curt Hanson of Ohio. I am just head over heels in love with this plant, it's got all the bells and whistles, great blooms, scapes and bud count. The silver edge is just icing on the cake.

The full frontal shot though can miss quite a few details. See here, taken from the side you will see the amazing curls of the sepals. This is so incredibly cool!

Most unusual for me is to zoom in so tight that I crop out parts of the flower but I was in the mood to experiment. I have to admit, I thought I'd hate this technique but instead, I'm crazy about it. I like this photo so much that I might try printing it out to put in a frame.

One last photo, this is a follow up to yesterday's post about the right light. This afternoon I just happened to notice the sun coming through the Begonia grandis (Hardy Begonia). Isn't it beautiful?

Tomorrow my Mom is coming in from Florida. She is the worlds best weeder and I just can't wait to see her whip my garden back into shape.

The right light

The past few days have been increasingly frustrating for me when it comes to taking photos in my garden. It prompted me to post about garden photography. I'm not by any means a professional photographer but my photos have been chosen to grace the front cover and inside of chapter of a gardening book a few years ago and they've been posted here for a few years now.

First of all, I use a simple point and shoot digital camera. It's not even a newer model but it has an excellent zoom lens which was my first criteria. So fair warning, my tips are not applicable to the super deluxe cameras that are out on the market.

Lighting is a big key factor in garden photography. The absolute best light is a good cloud cover. Full sun or early morning sun is very hard for me to work with.

The opening shot was taken in full late afternoon sun which can sometimes be used to your advantage. The flower is Campanula punctata which is just a pale creamy pink on the outside. What's cool about this shot is that the bloom is almost translucent and the spotting you see is actually on the inside of the bloom.

Here's the same flower taken on a cloudy day (see the sky?) and from underneath so you can see the spots. By the way, those power lines just totally ruin the photo. Never forget to look around inside your frame and make sure that there aren't other distractions in the background.


Working in the shade can bring another set of problems. I took quite a few photos of my Hydrangea blooms in hopes of getting one with enough clarity to crop and zoom. This isn't close to what I'd like to have but good enough to share.

Blues and sometimes magenta pinks are just impossible to capture. In the days of film, it was very hard to be able to capture the blues and I'm still having the same problem with digital cameras. In real life these blooms don't look like they have some terrible fungus growing on them. Yuck!

Here I was able to capture the color pretty well but unfortunately the strong dappled lighting coming through the trees creates shadows that distract you from the true beauty of these Hydrangeas.

By the way, forget the roses, give me Hydrangeas any day. My next garden is going to be chock full of these luscious, romantic blooms.

Last week I was complaining about the never ending rainy season we were having. One advantage though was the hundreds and hundreds of photos I was able to take.

So cross your fingers for me, I'd love just a half hour of cloud cover in the morning so I can take some more pictures to share with you.

Melanie

SUNY Farmingdale

Today I met a few women from my garden club and we were treated to a tour of the horticultural learning gardens at SUNY Farmingdale University.

This first shot was taken at the entrance gate.

Although we were there for a short time, I think I'll break down the visit into three posts. This first post is just to share some of the awesome images I brought home with me.

The plant material was grown to perfection, even with the never ending rain we've been getting this season. I love this combination of the dwarf Aruncus athusifolius and the Pulmonaria 'Mrs Moon'.

I didn't take a photo of the name tag for this so I'm not sure if it's a Heliopsis or a Helianthus (I always get them mixed up). Behind it is Physocarpus (Nine bark).

Another combination that blew me away is Astilbe 'Deutschland' and the variegated Symphytum 'Axminster Gold'.

Sheer luck! How's this for a shot of a butterfly on Stachys bloom? I can't believe it came out this clear as it was in constant motion.

Centaurea macrocephala is something I've tried by mail order but I need to get myself a large one of these so I get to see it grow in my garden.

Papyrus in the entrance garden. This garden is planned to peak in late summer, I hope to get back and see it then.

Clematis and a Rose, sheer heaven.

Finally, the blue on this little bulb Brodiaea laxa 'Queen Fabiola' is just Fabulous! I think I'll be looking for this beauty for my own garden.

The next post will be either about the structure in the garden or the shade rockery. Both were just awesome.

An Aerial View

Once or twice a year I remember to go upstairs and take photos from our bedroom windows. I love to look at these photos years later and see the progression of the gardens.

This is the view from my front bedroom window. I can see straight up the driveway. The funny thing is I rarely look out my bedroom window, I guess I'm outside more than I'm inside!

My daughter Emily has a better view, she can't see all the way out to the street but she has a more sideways view of the front perennial borders that flank the driveway.

My bedroom has windows that look out the back of the house too. Here's the newly opened swimming pool. Still too cold to swim in but who cares, at least it looks lovely!

At the front of the swimming pool is my little rock garden. If I could change one hardscape location here in my yard it would be the pool and patio area. It's just so big, rectangular and of course, smack dab in the middle of the yard.

I zoomed in on the back shade border with my adorable shed and my neighbors hideous white vinyl fence.

One last look at the opposite corner where I make my black gold (compost of course!).

If you look carefully you can see Calie-the-wonder-doodle taking one of her many laps around the pool patio.

This evening I took lots and lots of photos. The next week is chock full of gardening plans. My local garden club is hosting a flower show this Friday and Saturday at the Historic Kissam House in Huntington Village. I've got a ton of things to get ready but at least I've got lots of photos and ideas to share with you when I find a moment or two.

The Camera Doesn't Lie (but we can lend a hand)

Take a look through the lens, tell me what you see?

This simple phrase has been the number one, best advice given to me when it comes to photo taking. I am not a photographer. Many of you have left flattering remarks about my photos and I truly appreciate that. Those of you who are professional photographers will realize the truth in my statement, I am not a photographer.

My art is gardening. Photography is a tool for me, a tool that I have grown comfortable with after much use but still a tool. Photographs are ways for me to share the beauty I see in the garden, a photographer would see the the beauty in the photograph itself.

My husband Don is a much better photographer than I will ever be. When I first tried to take photographs in the garden he explained all kinds of things to me. Words I had never heard before and had no interest in retaining minutes after our conversation. One thing stuck though, when he asked me to look into the lens and tell him what I saw.

Of course I saw the pretty flower I was looking at, what else should I see? It took time before I saw more, there was a dead leaf in the corner, the label was half sticking out at the bottom, somebody had forgotten to dead head yesterday's bloom and so on. As I learned to really look into the lens, make my eye follow all four sides and see what else is in the photo, that's when the compliments started to come.

The photo above is one I like very much. Today I can sit here though and point out that if I had seen that weed bucket in the left bottom corner and the silver bird house pole, I could have moved the camera just a nudge to the right or zoomed in just a tiny bit more.

The webmaster for the American Hemerocallis Society, Tim Fehr is an awesome photographer. I was incredibly lucky to sit through one or two of his lectures on garden photography. Better yet, I got to follow along with him on a tour at Planting Fields Arboretum here on Long Island. He too gave me more tips than I wanted to retain, such as using a gray board and bouncing light and... well, that stuff flew right out of my head.

The tip Tim shared with me that stuck for all these years is the rule of thirds (I might have the words wrong but I'm sure of the concept). Split your photo into thirds. Three lines across and three lines down. Instead of always centering your photo right in the middle, try to compose it so your focus falls along one of those third lines. I really like this concept and find those photos much more relaxing, not so "in your face".

Above you can see my idea of the rule of thirds with the incredibly photogenic Iris cristata 'Alba'.

Of course, some plants just scream for that "in your face shot" as this Echinops did for me. I like to call it "Horton, are you in there?" Listen to your plant material if it talks to you.

Here you can see an example again of the rule of thirds. My subject was the delicious daylily 'Jeanne Fitton'. One of my all time favorite perennials, Stachys monieri was glad to help along as a backdrop.

For years I shot all my photos with our trusty Nikon N2020 but it was the Micro Nikkor 55 mm 1:2.8 lens that did the magic. I held out as long as I could but slide film was getting harder to come by and so was the processing. Finally we went digital, our first camera didn't last long and I'm several years into my simple Olympus camedia (chosen for it's powerful zoom).

I have never gotten the same feel from these digital images. Oh yes, there are some benefits. The incredible blues in the above photo of a Columbine were never possible with that slide film.

Besides capturing the blues, I can now crop, edit, blur, clarify and manipulate my photos in ways that were previously unimaginable. (Nepeta siberica above is another favorite perennial here).

Although I'm not a photographer, I do have to thank my camera. It was while looking through that lens that I fell in love with so many things. I was blinded for so many years, only focused on daylilies and yet the photos that captured the feeling I was looking for always seemed to have companion plants mixed in. My heart was trying to tell my head something, it just took a while before I listened. For you folks in warmer climates, the daylily above, 'Kathryn June Woods' is as etheral as daylilies come.


Just to be fair, I'll finish with not one but two tips. First comes the photography tip. If at all possible, don't shoot your photos in full sun. If you have no choice, try to stay away from the hottest hours of the day, 11:00 - 3:00. In fact if it's raining too hard to work in the garden, throw on a slicker, bare your feet and get out there with a big golf umbrella and your camera.

The last tip, is for those northerners looking for rock solid hardy daylilies that are fantastically beautiful too, check out Karol Emmerich's cultivars at Springwood Gardens, located in rural Minnesota, these beauties (like 'Cast Your Net' above) are top notch.

Imagine that, me giving photography lessons. Instead of "photography for dummies" I should have called this post "photography by dummies".

Note to self...

Dear self,

Please remember to take more photos of the garden from the other side of the fence. Try to do this more than once a year, let's say once a season or even once a month.

When your back aches and your arms are dead, you will turn green with envy when you see the amazing view your neighbor has. Actually, all you really need to do is take a photo of her yard from your side and you will love your garden more than ever. Trust me.

Love, me

Happy New Year!

(A garden year is never complete without some "to die for" tours. In 07 we were treated to a perfect spring day at Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay NY)

The beginning of a New Year is a wonderful time. It's a time to reflect upon the last year, and at the same time you can dream of all the incredible things you can do in the new year.

Resolutions? I haven't officially made any...yet. One thing I know is that I missed out on my garden big time in 2007. Was it burn out, or just to many pots on the stove at once?

All I know is that the feeling when I'm in my garden or sharing it with others is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. My hopes for 2008 will be based around finding my way back to the soil and to this site too.(Will 08 be the year the Schizophragma hydrangeoides finally covers the ladder?)

As a beginning, I've offered my plant knowledge to our local high school, Walt Whitman HS in South Huntington New York. In a short time I'll be beginning our first ever Adult Education program on gardening. I can't wait!

For now, here's a look at a few of last years highlights.

Read some of my posts of 2007 and you'll quickly learn how much I love Sedum 'Matrona'

Hardy Geraniums like this Geranium cantabrigense Karmina are star performers in my perennial borders.

My wish? 2008 I'll finally get a photo of the Polygonatum odorum 'Striatum' (Solomon's Seal) that does it justice. There's a reason it's the first plant that sells out every year at our plant sale. Can you say AWESOME?

Oops! This photo is sideways but you can just imagine my delight when I found that my Ipomoea (Morning Glory) not only seeded itself but grew true to the variety that was there in 2006. With fingers crossed I hope to find a seedling or two again this year and promise to treat it better!

One thing I'm thankful for is the few photos that I did take, hopefully so I'd remember things that need to be done. This lovely plant (I'm guessing a Lysamachia) is in the most horrendous location and needs to come out to shine. It can even be a vigorous grower, that just means I'll have more to share.

As for me? Just like Arnold...I'll be back!

Melanie