Think Like a Gardener – The Book

The third book of the PhotoBotanic Garden Photography series is Think Like a Gardener.

If you want to be a garden photographer you need to think like a gardener.  You are not just taking a picture of a landscape, you are photographing a garden. Your own understanding of a garden will lead to your own photography style. Think like a gardener; think what a gardener would like to see in your photograph.

The chapters are lessons about gardens as creative spaces, with intention and intrigue.  Each lesson gives you an assignment to explore what you already know about gardening, and help you tell your own story.

Think Like A Gardener is broken into six chapters that are described below. Each lesson comes directly from the on-line Workshop and are bundled here.  The lessons build on the previous; by the end of the book, your camera will be your tool to express appreciation of gardens – and you will have your own style.

Do have fun.

Each lesson is available as individual iBooks in iTunes or Google Play.

3.1 – Design and Space

Every garden has a theme, whether accidental or purposeful, well-maintained or messy. The garden fits into its surroundings, and that fit is the design — how it occupies the space it lives in. Design is a big part of the story of any good garden photograph.

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3.2 – Hardscape

Hardscape is what physically defines a garden — the bones. For landscape architects, it is the frame upon which the plants are draped; look for it as you consciously compose your picture.

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3.3 – Weather, Moods, and Seasons

To a gardener, it may seem obvious that daffodils suggest spring, roses peak in summer, apples mean autumn, and bare trees represent winter. This may be obvious to you but perhaps not to your viewer. And it may be so obvious to you that you overlook the seasonal potential for garden photography.

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3.4 – Using the Light

Garden photographers must learn to avoid hot, contrasty light and understand that soft light gives a better dynamic range and rich, realistic color.

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3.5 – Finding Garden Themes

When faced with the overwhelming choices in a beautiful garden, it is almost essential for garden photographers to give themselves a target, an assignment.  Assignment above: geraniums.

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3.6 – Photographing Garden Plants

A photograph of a plant should be as carefully considered as was the plant when it was placed in the garden. The photo should reveal a genuine understanding of the plant in its setting and its distinguishing features.