It is hard for me to resist flowers. I tell myself I garden for foliage and texture, for habitat and native plants, but when presented with flowers I am a glutton. I can not resist the abundant profusion of the California Spring Trials where flowers are on show by the millions. I go to the [...]
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What the heck is holt_361_1400sq_aj_op_ca_smfybr_ltef_upres_noisemedian7 ?! Such cryptic code for such a fine rendering of this Chilean Wine Palm. The string of code is actually my file number of the final state. As I move from one state of the image to the next, as I apply different effects and filters I save various stages [...]
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I am overwhelmed with the possibilities. It begins in the garden, any good garden where I may be blessed to work. Here, Sherry Merciari’s complex Hortisexual garden. (Hortisexuals being the band of horticulturally obsessed who use their garden as a way to contain their plant lust.) But any good garden offers a photographer many possibilities. [...]
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Some days, simply venturing out with the camera is truly a tonic. With full intent to go capture something, I escape the office, get out of doors needing, indeed craving for photos to wash over me, allow me to click a shutter, to respond and create. On this stormy day I put on a rain [...]
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I have missed two entire months. For the record, I fell off a ladder onto my studio floor on Aug. 30. Six broken ribs, separated shoulder, fractured skull, and concussion. Life can change in an instant. Much recovered by now except a residual paralyzed facial nerve that keeps my left eye from blinking. It is [...]
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As I get closer to launching a redesign of my PhotoBotanic website, I’ve started playing with tulip photos. I have long used a tulip as my logo, even in the website toolbar, and am wondering if I need a new one. These ‘Niigata’ tulips (red) with the dark purple ‘Havran’ are floating on a sea [...]
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It took 4 months to grow this picture; one second in the garden to “see” it; and 8 hours of computer work to clean it up. The one second part is easy to explain. Last Saturday was a garden day and when I walked the garden wondering where to start, what undone chore would be [...]
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Part of the commercial flower shoot for Sakata at the California Spring Trials were sunflowers, the variety ‘Vincent’. To get them for spring in California they were flown in from Holland, where they waited for two weeks until the show, for when I was on site to take pictures. No, they did not look surreal [...]
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I was recently commissioned to photograph a very special magnolia in a very special, private garden. The resulting photo was to be a surprise gift and I was only allowed access during one afternoon when the owner was away. I wrote about this adventure on my Gardening Gone Wild blog but did not go into [...]
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I am baffled by what I sometimes see. I will slap my face looking at a scene and wonder why am I not seeing what I expect to see. The Tupelo tree (Nyssa sylvatica) in my front yard commands attention when it comes into fall color, and I expect to be amazed every year. I [...]
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