Stock Photography

Photographer using reflectors and scrim photographing roses on sunny day

PhotoBotanic is the stock photography image library of award winning garden photographer Saxon Holt. The garden pictures featured here and the many searchable galleries represent 25 years of assignment photography and 20 books on gardening. Poke around and enjoy !

Search our photos directly by keyword tags. Images may be licensed directly from the site, but if you don’t find what you need, or want us to search our in-house archives for you, contact us directly.

We make special galleries for book and magazine publishers and many of the galleries are ready made story ideas.

Explore in the entire PhotoBotanic website featuring a store for fine art prints, books, e-books, and workshops.

Publishing

PhotoBotanic has expanded stock photography licensing to web publishing with e-books, written here as Living Books, and artwork all exploring techniques of garden photography to animate fresh ideas in gardening. With the interactivity and linking of a website’s pages, it’s an exciting time for content providers to self-publish.

Good Garden Photography eBook cover

Our first e-book, Good Garden Photography achieved the 2015 Gold Award from the Garden Writer’s Association as the Best Overall Book published in 2014, commending the strong graphics and dynamic links to extended coverage in judges comments.

PhotoBotanic is constantly changing with new content. Think of it as a living book, where you can decide which content to link during your visit.

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About Living Books

In the Living Books section you will find deep content and lengthy articles about gardening and photography. This is where I explore a wide range of subjects and write new books, two or three every year.

These are living books, ongoing projects; constantly growing, constantly exploring, constantly learning, constantly teaching. Each new article explores something special, some new way to see a garden or celebrate the beauty of plants. Comments welcome.

Currently I am working on the Summer-Dry Project – promoting sustainable plant choices in summer-dry climates, the Extraction Series – a way to photo illustrate plants that is inspired by botanic illustration, and three e-books: Gardening with California Native Plants, Photographing Grasses, and Light in the Garden.

Follow along. I report about all this in the Living Book section and eventually the books are published as e-books.

About Saxon Holt

Photo of Saxon HoltHis images throughout the book are stunningly alive with light.” Rick Darke (American Gardener review of American Meadow Garden)

“Some of my most cherished garden books are illustrated with Saxon Holt’s luscious and distinctive photographs” – Susan Morrison

A life-long gardener, Saxon Holt spent his professional time as a commercial photographer until 1985 when he discovered the gardening market and could no longer stay indoors. He quickly developed a reputation as a photographer with a distinct vision and understanding of plants and landscapes.

Now with PhotoBotanic he is publishing his own content and exploring gardens that celebrate plants in artful and distinctive ways. While he continues to work with authors and publishers on their projects, PhotoBotanic offers a unique venue in web publishing to explore his own vision.

His work and his own books increasingly focus on the relationship between gardens and the land, seeking a sustainable aesthetic that can enhance both gardener and the earth. In the seminal book Plants and Landscapes for Summer-Dry Climates Saxon was determined “to change the aesthetic of what we expect to see in a garden photograph”. The book received awards from both The American Horticultural Society and The Garden Writers of America.

His recent books The American Meadow Garden with John Greenlee and Hardy Succulents with Gwen Kelaidis allowed him to explore gardens that have an authentic connection to place. Both of these collaborations with author and publisher have been recognized as a Silver Medal, Outstanding Book by The Garden Writers of America.

Professionally, he is a member of ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers), a Board member of Pacific Horticulture Society, and is a Fellow of GWA (Garden Writers of America)

He lives and gardens Northern California where he has found the climate for plants and adventuresome gardeners to be a constant source of inspiration.

“Through PhotoBotanic, I can now participate in online lessons and apply his tips and knowledge to my own photography. Isn’t the Internet grand?”

– Dee Nash—Professional Writer and Blogger at Red Dirt Ramblings