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That Blooming Garden- Pentax User
Visiting a garden or historic house with gardens within its grounds, is a great way to get colourful images throughout the year. Whether its practising your macro skills on individual flowers or taking in the garden as a whole, the variety of shots that you can achieve is vast.
We are lucky to have a great number of wonderful public gardens around the country, ranging from the large scale with acres of garden and parkland down to smaller kitchen size gardens, many which offer the visitor certain flowers that are unique to that garden. Therefore, if you are prepared to travel around, then you can create quite a collection of different species.
There are two approaches to shooting these gardens, either as a wide view and trying to capture the spirit of the garden in one shot, or photographing each flower and making an image of individual plants in isolation. When photographing large areas of the garden, you can make compositions from the different shapes and colours of the various beds. Even with this approach, choose a prominent subject to fill the foreground with and then choose a lens of around 35mm or wider and get in as close as possible to the foreground plant. A small aperture is needed for this to retain as much depth of field as possible, so put the camera on a tripod, select an aperture of f16 or higher with aperture priority and let the camera choose the corresponding shutter speed. As the camera is on a tripod, it won’t matter if the resulting shutter speed is
slow (remember to switch off the shake reduction ‘SR Mode’ when on a tripod, as this can add an unnecessary softness to the shot). Use a cable release to fire the shutter to avoid camera shake, or just use the cameras self-timer to fire the shutter. If you are not confident with apertures, then use the landscape program setting on your camera, as this tells the camera that you want plenty of the shot to be in focus and will also make sure the foreground is sharp.
With lots of people visiting the gardens, it can be a problem excluding them from your shots. It just takes a bit of patience waiting for a clear view, but I often also take a shot including other visitors, as they can sometimes add extra interest to the picture. You can gain an advantage by arriving as soon the garden opens, or by waiting until the end of the day. There are usually less visitors at these times and the light should also be better for your shots.
I also try to avoid plant-identifying signs, as although these are useful in naming the plants (so take a note for your captions), they tend to be distracting to the photo, so exclude these if you can. A slight shift to the left or right will often hide them behind a flower head.
Although a glorious sunny day can yield great colour in your garden pictures, it can also produce too much contrast for the camera to handle, leading to deep shadows where you don’t want them. A bright, but overcast day is often more preferable giving a more even light, very much like using a giant softbox in a studio. If you are filling the frame with a flower then a blue sky won’t matter anyway.
If you have a macro lens for your camera then a garden is a great place to use it and really get in tight on the colourful flowers. Pentax make two macro lenses for the digital SLR’s, a 50mm and a 100mm. Both offer superb optics and life size 1:1 magnification, the only difference between them is that the 100mm allows you to photograph your chosen subject from a further distance away. The zoom lenses in the Pentax range, will get you around ¼ life size and as a close as around 30cms from the subject, so not as close as a full macro, but good enough for larger heads or a group of flowers. The Optio compacts also have a macro setting, allowing you to get within 15cms of your subject and this is also great for filling the frame with an individual flower head. Whichever camera you use, a small aperture is once again needed for these close-ups, as depth of field is very limited at this close range. The flower setting in the program picture modes is an ideal alternative to aperture priority, as it focus the lens on the centre of the frame where the flower will be and automatically chooses as small an aperture as the lighting conditions will allow.
As far as focusing is concerned, a good rule of thumb is to remember is that depth of field extends twice as far behind the point you focus on compared to in front of it, so its always a good idea to focus 1/3rd of the way into the shot if focusing manually. This applies both your wide shots, as well as the macro and is useful to use if your Optio model has this feature using the four-way controller. SLR users should automatically switch to manual focus for complete control.
The one problem with shooting macro outside in a garden, is the wind. The slightest breeze can cause your image to blur, so it’s handy to carry a small reflector with you in your bag. Not only will this make an excellent wind break, but it will also help fill in the shadows if the light is quite strong and directional. Once again, use a tripod and make use of the cameras self-timer, so that the camera takes the shot whilst you hold the reflector in the ideal position. If the wind is quite strong, then you may also want to keep the shutter speeds a bit higher, as well as using a small aperture. You can achieve this by selecting a slightly higher ISO rating of either 200 or 400, which fools the camera into thinking that it’s brighter than it actually is. Being able to do this is a useful feature of digital cameras.
I plan my year by visiting various gardens as they peak with their own special flowers. Spring is the time for the first bloom of flowers that burst into life after the cold winter, like snowdrops, whilst summer is the peak time for most other flowers, including roses and the herbaceous borders common in many gardens. Autumn brings a change of colour to most gardens, with trees turning gold and red and is one of my favourite times to visit. The arboretums are perfect places for this time of the year, with vast areas awash with autumn colour. Remember to look to the floor as well as up in the trees for fallen leaves and scattered conkers, which also make great compositions.
Most public gardens are shut for the winter, but there are some open all year, many that feature evergreen foliage, like topiary, that you can shoot at any time of the year. If you can time a visit with a dusting of snow as well, then you will have a collection of shots that contrast beautifully with the colour of spring and summer.
As well as the usual flowers and plants on display, also look out for other objects in the garden that will make a good picture. There’s all sorts of things like ornamental pots, benches, statues, walls and steps, all of which make great subjects to point your camera at, either together with the flowers or even on their own using a telephoto lens to isolate them.
Make a point of visiting a few gardens this year and see how easy it is to come home with some great pictures. Even if you don’t go out to visit a public garden, you can always practise your technique in your own garden and you may want to think about planting some flowers specifically for shooting the following year, which of course will also make your garden look colourful as well.
Season Calendar
January- Snowdrops
February- Crocuses
March- Daffodils
April- Cherry blossom/tulips
May- Bluebells/rhododendrons/azalea
July- Roses/herbaceous borders
October- autumn colours/conkers
Nov/Dec- Topiary (good at any time)
Top Five Gardens
Rococo Gardens, Gloucestershire- (snowdrop) Pitmedden Gardens, Scotland- (formal garden)
Exbury Gardens, New Forest- (rhododendrons /autumn colours)
Levens Hall, Cumbria- (topiary)
Isabella Plantation, Richmond Park, London- (rhododendrons, azalea)
Plus
Keukenhoff Gardens, Holland- tulips, tulips, tulips!
© Craig Roberts
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