 |
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the nursery and thinking of all the gardens that now include my peonies, this special article about photographing plants and gardens is a gift to gardeners this season. The article was written by award winning Quebec photographer Louise Tanguay and I hope it inspires you as her work has always inspired me.
Photographing Your Garden
by Louise Tanguay, photographer (website)
Would you believe me if I told you that garden photography is considered one of the most challenging forms of photography? You would think that because a garden is well groomed and filled with beautiful elements that garden photography would be easy. Not so. Why?
Photographing in a garden is very different from photographing in a studio, where you have control over your subject matter and your lighting. In a garden the elements in your composition cannot be moved around or displaced as they would be in a studio. Try and tell a flower bed or tree to move a little to the right or to the left! And it is almost impossible to use artificial light. One must rely almost entirely on natural light. And how do you adjust the lighting when your main source, the sun, is moving across the sky, changing the color of the light as it does so?... and disappears behind some clouds when it feels like it!? Photographing out in nature is all about being flexible and continuously adjusting to changing conditions. It's also all about suffering the whims of Mother Nature. (She can be so mean sometimes!) Enduring the rain, the sun, the clouds, the cold, the heat... and the garden photographer's worst enemy, the wind.
So in order to make great photographs in a garden, you have to be there when light conditions are best. Early morning and end of day when it's sunny. Mid-morning till mid-afternoon when it's overcast. A bit of rain is fine, too much rain is hell. And pray that there's no wind!
The pond at Les Jardins de Quatre-Vents at Cap-à-l'Aigle, QC on a rainy day.
Not all gardens are photogenic. Reford Gardens is a wonderful garden, yet I find it to be one of the most difficult to photograph. Since it is mostly built on the banks of a stream that flows through the forest, it is very low and shady. If it's sunny, there are light and dark patches everywhere. On a cloudy day, no light seems to penetrate the canopy of leaves. On the other hand, a smaller, humbler garden might have a quite different potential where it would be easy to produce great photographs.
Early morning in The Crabapple Garden at Reford Gardens, Métis-sur-Mer, QC
Gardener vs Photographer
Appreciating a garden as a gardener is not the same as appreciating it as a photographer. The perception of the garden is completely different from one to the other. As a gardener, one sees flowers, trees, flower beds, sculptures, benches, etc. A photographer on the other hand translates everything he or she sees into lines, shapes, colors and textures. So in order to make good pictures of your garden, you must change your perception of it. You have to change your interpretation of what you see from it's botanical form to its visual aspect, to its graphic nature. You have to forget the names of your plants. You have to transform everything you see into elements of design, that is lines, shapes, colors and textures. You have to develop your sense of observation, your visual perception. In other words, take off you gardener's head and put on what I call your Kodak head. Stop looking and thinking like a gardener and start looking through your new Kodak eyes.
A lawn is now a green rectangle, a flower bed a long rectangle, or a diagonal line for that matter, or an undulating form. A flower has become a colored oval or round object that sits at the top of a long green cylinder.
A flower and the Long Walk at Reford Gardens reduced to their basic shapes.
What is a Photograph
A photograph is nothing more than an image created by light recorded on film or on a camera's sensor. Once the photograph is taken, the flowers, bushes and trees are gone! You are left with only the memory of what you saw and lines, shapes, colors, textures. These are the elements of composition that now represent your subject, the building blocks with which you build your photographs.
Looking Through Your New Kodak Eyes
Why do you need to do this? Simply because human eyes don't see exactly as a camera does.
A camera does not discriminate as we do.
A photograph hardly ever reproduces a scene quite the way we saw it.
The human eye is a great compensator; the camera isn't.
When we look at a scene we selectively see only the important elements and more or less ignore the rest. A camera, on the other hand, sees all the details within the field of view. This is the reason some of our pictures are often disappointing. Backgrounds may be cluttered with objects we had not seen or do not remember. Our subjects are smaller in the frame or less striking than we recall or the entire scene may lack significance and life. So if you don't want to hear yourself saying: ''That wasn't there when I took the shot!'' or ''That's not how the scene looked at all.'' Make sure you put on you Kodak eyes before shooting anything.
I believe that the background in your photographs is often more important than the subject itself. The eye is first attracted to whatever is very light or very dark in an image. If there is a hot spot or an object littering your background, the spectator's eye will immediately be drawn to it and pay no attention to the subject you have chosen to show. So you've missed your goal entirely, for lack of observation when you took the picture.
In the photo on the left, the eye is attracted to the white spot at the upper right
and will tend to come out of the photograph. Moving the camera slightly
changes the background, thus keeping the eye inside the frame.
A photograph is never an exact clone of what your eyes have see. The camera records an isolated part of the larger scene, reduces it to two dimensions and freezes it. There is often a color shift in the finished product, depending on light conditions. Portions of your subject that were in the shade, for example might turn out with a bluish cast in your photograph.
Left : Scene shot in the shade without color correction. Right : Scene corrected in Photoshop.
Manoir Louis-Joseph Papineau, Montebello, QC
Dynamic range is the difference between the lightest and darkest parts of an image or scene. The human eye can perceive a greater dynamic range than is possible with a camera. Therefore, if you are before a scene where you have a blue sky with clouds in the background and darker, shadowy areas in the foreground, your eyes will have no problem discerning all the details in the clouds as well as the details in the shadow areas. The camera doesn't have this capacity. It's dynamic range isn't wide enough. Therefore, if you expose for the details in the clouds, your shadows will be plugged. If you expose for detail in the shadows, your clouds will be washed out. How do you bypass this difficulty? One solution is to shoot the scene at different exposures and combine them in an image editing program (HDR), but this is matter for a whole other article!
Small pavilion and peonies at Manoir Louis-Joseph Papineau, Montebello, QC
You have to learn to see as a camera does, not as your eyes do. You have to be able to imagine what your subject will look like on a screen or on paper once it has passed through the lens and been transformed by the camera. This comes with practice and experience.
''I can't feel in my picture what I felt as I was taking it.''
I've heard this comment so many times! Beyond the visual aspects of your subject lies it's emotional content. Plants are alive, have their own personality. They express feelings. You are alive and have feelings also. How can you preserve the life and expression of your plants in your photographs?
First, you have to tune into the feeling of your subject. You have to be very attentive to it. Spend time. Observe it. Find its qualities, it's flaws. Good photographs depend on a lot more than a beautiful subject. A great photograph takes time and study, thinking and feeling. You have to learn to see with clarity and purpose.
What about your own feelings? How can you express your own feelings in your photographs? You perceive your surroundings with much more than your eyes. You perceive what's around you with your intellect, your intuition, with your sense of smell, your sense of touch, with your feelings, your soul. You hope, of course, that all of that will show up in your photograph, that the spectator will feel what you felt. This, of course, is the main goal of the photographer. So how can your own feelings transpire into your photographs?
If you want your emotions to be felt by the person that looks at your photographs, you have, first, to be fully aware of them as your prepare to take the picture. You have to identify them and figure out the best way to communicate them in your photos.
Ask yourself questions: "What is it that has attracted me to photograph this particular subject?" "What emotions has it aroused?" "What is it exactly that has produced these emotions?" "How can I best capture them in this subject?" The answers will lead you into yourself and your subject. Then move on to the technical questions: "Should I get closer, should I change my angle?" "Which lens should I use?" "Are there any hot spots or rubbish in the background?" "Do I need shallow depth of field or would I like to see everything in focus?'"
Something that' s very interesting is that the more your look, the more you see. The more you see, the better you see. And the better you see, the more you want to keep on looking and seeing.
Photographing Your Garden
Evoking a Sense of the Garden
Be they formal or informal, symmetrical or asymmetrical, gardens are usually an organized space. There is an underlying structure in each garden, composed of flower beds, lawns, paths, etc. They usually include structural elements such as benches, bridges, gates and statuary, positioned to play a key role in the organization of the garden. By extension, this organization serves the photographer. Your photographs will benefit from the attentive observation and analysis of the basic structure of the garden itself.
The Big Picture (Overall view)
A good place to start is by shooting overviews of the garden that reveal it's basic design. Overall views help to establish a sense of place, give some idea of scope, capture a feeling of the environment. It's important that your photographs express its uniqueness. For example, if a garden is surrounded by mountains, try to include some of the peaks. If it's a seaside garden, include a portion of ocean. On the other hand, if it's a city garden, try avoiding telephone poles and wires.
Allerton Garden, Kauai, Hawaii
High perspective views from above are always interesting in painting the big picture, either from a second-story window or a nearby hill. Do you have access to a roof? Stand on a chair or bench. A view from a few inches higher can make a lot of difference. (I always have a small stepladder in my car.)
A wide-angle lens is the best lens to use for overall views. Use a foreground to attract attention, then lead the viewer's eye into the picture by choosing an eye-catching feature in the background.
Peonies at Ottawa Experimental Farm
Capturing Vignettes (Specific views)
Concentrate on planting schemes and design concepts to create an image that portrays a discrete, coherent portion of the garden. Find what determines the character of the garden, look for its distinctive elements (bridge, sculpture, flower garden, waterfall, etc.) Use a focal point. Search for an intimate perspective. Observe relationships between colors, shapes, textures. Arrange the plants in esthetically powerful compositions.
This flower bed at Domaine Joly-De Lotbinière in Ste-Croix, QC,
was shot with a telephoto lens, using the main building of the garden as a background.
Close-ups (Macrophotography) - Intimate views
For a gardener as well as a photographer all flowers are unique. Each has it's own life, it's own personality. Using a macro lens or close-up attachments will help you highlight details of individual plants or design details and reveal its personality.
White Echinacea, Parc du Bois-de-Coulonge, Quebec City, QC
Tips To Make Better Photographs
Feel
Let yourself feel the garden, through quiet, minute observation. Moving in close and framing tight compositions will draw in the viewer's attention. Don't be scared to bring your own vision, reveal your awareness, your sensibility in your photos.
Explore
Explore your subject, move around it, observe it from different angles.
Same daisy shot at different angles.
Use different points of view, different camera angles. If the camera is low, looking up, the background will often be blue sky, thus avoiding clutter in the background. Be very attentive to the background, look behind your subject. Moving a little to the right or to the left will often ''clean up'' your background or make it more interesting. Make it a habit of changing your angle slightly, all the while observing the relationship between your subject and the background. Determine if you want it to be blurred or in focus, then use appropriate depth-of-field.
Use back-lighting to enhance contours.
Be attentive that your picture doesn't feature your own shadow. Moving to the side or crouching down will remove it. Be aware of the changing color of light. Groom your pictures. Pinch off a diseased leaf, move a water hose, get rid of a twig or piece of mulch. Experiment with different techniques, different focal lengths. There is no end to the creative process.
Study
Look at what other photographers have done, consult garden photography books and photo magazines, analyze other peoples' photographs. Join a camera club. They're a fantastic resource. And whenever you have time and circumstances allow... go out and shoot, shoot, shoot. Practice make perfect! And most of all, have fun!!!
No one knows a garden better than its creator. The fact that you know your garden intimately equips you well to photograph it. You are the one that knows when your flowers will be at perfect bloom and at peak color. Whether you photograph it to document its growth or record its different plant species or whether you use your garden as a source of art and creativity, making better photographs will always be rewarding.
Buddha at Les Jardins de Quatre-Vents at Cap-à-l'Aigle, QC
Note: Louise Tanguay offers a number of photography workshops. Visit her website for details
email: .
phone: 450.458.2759 fax: 450.458.0253
La Pivoinerie D'Aoust,
P.O. Box 220, Hudson Heights,
QC J0P 1J0, Canada