Acer palmatum dissectum atropurpureum, Red Cutleaf Japanese Maple tree, spring leaves unfolding, Winterthur Garden

I can’t enter my own photo… but I would enter: Spring Leaves Unfolding, Japanese Maple Tree – Winterthur Garden.

Some of you know I co-blog at Gardening Gone Wild with Fran Sorin and Debra Lee Baldwin.  Indeed, that is where the idea for an online garden photography book first surfaced, under the tag “The Camera Always Lies”.

For years we ran a very successful garden photography contest, ‘Picture This’, as a way to link garden bloggers.  Now I am reviving the contest and expanding it to any garden photographer who has a photo to share.

To win you have to enter. :-)  A real tip follows.   But more importantly you get to contribute to the gallery of spring garden photos that the contest becomes and see other contest photos.

If you do have a blog that you want to share, by all means enter the link, but if you just want to enter a photo without creating a blog post about it, follow the rules in the original post on Gardening Gone Wild.  Basically, all you need to do is upload photo to the contest Facebook fan page which will give you the link you need to post, per the rules of the contest.

If you do enter via the Gardening Gone Wild Fan Page, and as long as you are on Facebook, please share your contest photo on the PhotoBotanic Fan Page too.

Now for a real tip on how to win a photo contest:  Use all four sides of the photo.   Students in the Workshop get the Fill the Frame lesson the very first day of membership, and others can read the lesson as an iBook in the Store.

Before and After Slider

The first photo is a great shot to establish the scene and tells a good story, but getting close and filling the frame with the wonderful branch pattern is a contest photo, and will be part of an upcoming calendar.

OK readers, you are garden photography aficionados.  Enter your own photo.