Night photographer Lance Keimig takes you on a journey to the Aurora Borealis and helps you from start to finish, beginning with preparation for cold, Icelandic weather and finishing up with exposure...
Make sure that you have an image showing the garden and its context,
i.e., the surrounding buildings and landscape.
Include people in the garden for scale:
Wherever possible, show views framed by objects or structures within the
garden:
A general view of the garden works best if the image has a distinct
foreground, middle ground, and background:
Here is an example of two "flat" images. The one on the left seems to
be a failure photographically. The one on the right comparatively
successful. How to explain the difference between the two images below?
Perhaps the designer of the garden intended the right-hand view to be
dwelt upon whereas the left-hand view is seen only from a path.
Here are a few more foreground-middle ground-background images that seem
to work reasonably well...
If there is flowing water in the garden, a tripod and a slow shutter
speed (1/4 second or longer) are best for capturing the spirit of the
water:
If there are bridges in the garden, either capture the reflection or the
path over the bridge:
Check for underwater life... (some of these images would have been
improved if taken with a polarizing filter to remove surface
reflections)
Get some images of single plants or flowers but remember that even a
comprehensive inventory of these won't capture the design of a
particular garden.
When photographing sculpture in the garden, try to capture as much of
the context as possible. Your images shouldn't look the same as if
you'd brought the sculpture into a photo studio.
Don't neglect interesting architectural details within the garden.
Iron gates and stonework are particularly photogenic.
Try for color balance, remembering that red and yellow are two or three
times visually more powerful than green or white. In the images below,
note how easily red can overwhelm your eyes.
Practical Details
Whenever possible, use a tripod. Unless it
is very windy, elements of a garden won't be moving around much and
you'll get higher quality images as well as have the freedom to employ
smaller apertures. The small apertures will give images a wider depth
of field, i.e., more objects will be in focus from foreground to
background.
If you can't use a tripod, make sure to pack relatively fast lenses
(f/2.8 or faster) and ISO 400 film. Among the ISO 400 films, my
favorites are professional color negative films, intended for weddings.
These have less color saturation and contrast than consumer films and
therefore will render distinct green tones more distinctly. Check the photo.net film page for our latest
recommendations in professional ISO 400 negative film. Most of the
images on this page were taken with Fuji NPH or Kodak Portra 400NC film;
click on the thumbnails for technical details. If you are using a
tripod, you can indulge in the luxury of slide film. Again, pick one
with a painterly palette and good separation among green tones.
A 50mm lens on a 35mm SLR camera can be ideal for garden photography.
It can focus close enough to isolate a plant. The normal perspective
gives a viewer an accurate idea of what the garden will feel like. A 50/1.4 lens is fast enough to permit good
photography without a tripod, assuming extensive depth of field is not
required.
You can do some fun things with a wide angle lens. It is
useful for exaggerating the structure of a formal European garden or
getting a frame-filling picture of a sculpture while still including a
lot of background. Here are a couple of examples taken with a 20-35mm
zoom lens:
A telephoto lens is good for compressing perspective and is particularly
good in European gardens with their lanes of trees. Here are a couple
of snapshots from Giardino Giusti in Verona
(sadly they are miscaptioned as being from the Boboli garden in Florence):
A few things I would like to add concerning photographing gardens. As a professional photographer who shots gardens for a living a really important aspect of gardening photography is getting colour into your shots, which could be from plants, flowers, painted walls or sculptures. Also eliminating unwanted background material, ie: if you are shooting a Formal English style garden and there is a giant palm tree growing next door, avoid it at all costs. Also try shooting from different perspectives, on the ground, from the top storey of the house or from the top of a fence.
Also try and be sensitive to the overall aesthetic of the design, if it is a Japanese garden be aware of the way the garden is designed and why.
Cheers Brent.
Also that single flowers can be shot in another environment as a garden: above my hawaii-orchids with a winterly landscape from Karlsruhe in the background.
These "tips" are extremly formulaic. The photographic examples are pedestrian and banal. I would rather use my imagination and a solid concept when photgraphing anything. I would rather make art than toss off a photo essay that discribes a place.
Phil, thank you so much for taking the time to share your knowledge. I really enjoyed reading this as well as the other "Learn" resources on photo.net.
Especially useful for me today, the first day of spring. I woke up today thinking about some garden photography and this was the first place I came. VERY helpful!
Gardens usually have a particular style or theme. Identifying this and then shooting an image which captures this is usually my initial objective. Asking the garden creator to select their place of pride in the garden can also be helpful. Plants and or flowers which represent the character of the garden make excellent secondary images. i usually ask myself what feelings I am experiencing. Then, what is there about this garden that generates these feelings? From here I can usually compose frames which capture that feeling, hopefully communicating these to viewers.
There are some nice basic tips here. A very good quality wide angle lens is a must, as is shooting with a tripod. With my landscape and garden photography I tend to accentuate strong saturated color if I am using chrome film. Fuji negative film also does a nice job, but it tends to be a bit grainy for my taste. Gardens can also be shot in black and white quite successfully...especially gardens which include a lot of architectural elements. --Andrew
