Gardening Gone Wild is bringing back the Picture This photo contest and since I am the judge I may as well follow up my own advice: “… a chance to look back at a whole year of photos and get your files organized.”
I have huge backlogs of photos that I barely know I have. On my assignments it’s easy, even mandatory to organize my files. I process them and put them in my catalog with all sorts of metadata for easy searching as soon as absolutely possible so that I can deliver them to my clients.
But I also have lots and lots of personal work, in my own garden, or gardens I visit on my own time. I keep a clipboard and log by my computer to keep track of what I have shot and where they are in the computer, but all too often, the photos are not seen for months, even years. Sometime I will cherry-pick one image for a Facebook post, or to send to the garden owner, or quickly file in my database, but I am embarrassed to say I have photos from my first days with the digital camera that I have never processed.
To prove my point, I just picked, quite by random, this Leucospermum photo from a 2008 trip to Leaning Pine Arboretum to photograph grasses.
Now I am feeling overwhelmed with the backlog of work. Work I might have been able to license if I had it ready to go.
Well, the good news is I spent my time working on photos that I knew did have a client, and other photos from that Leaning Pine shoot ended up in The American Meadow Garden. So how about 2014 ? What were my favorites?
A big reason this was on of my favorites is how well it turned out from multiple exposures using my telephoto lens and successive focal points.
I use the same technique of stacking multiple frame on these crocus to get deep focus.
Lots of great native plant gardens
A trip to New Mexico
My daughter, Annie got married in June, so her photographer Dad made a story once she discovered the amazing Lisa Ziegler’s local grown flower farm, Gardener’s Workshop, in Virginia. And Lisa was just about to publish her book – Cool Flowers.
A fall visit to Portland, Oregon to give a presentation to the Garden Club found me in some wonderful gardens.
Even a family reunion in Maui had garden photos.
I spent lots of time learning the “extraction” process, where I do a PhotoBotanic illustration extracting a key component from a garden scene to illustrate the plant in situ.
One of the reasons I have started self-publishing my own books is so that I can use my favorite photos and go to interesting gardens that might otherwise not get published. I can always use self publishing as the excuse to photograph what I think is important.
And I can seek my art in my own store.
So, how did I narrow down a whole year o shooting to just these photos ? I ran out of time. Only much one can do in a blog post … 🙂