Creative Garden Photography: Making Great Photos of Flowers, Gardens, Landscapes, and the Beautiful World Around Us

What’s Not to Like about Gardens?

"Your land must be a realm of peace

and content, and there must gardeners

be in high honour."

—J.R.R. Tolkein, The Two Towers

What’s not to like about gardens? I adore gardens, and I certainly hope you do, too! I also love flowers and beautiful landscapes. The world would be a better place with more beauty, flowers, and gardens.

Creative Garden Photography is a book about gardens, flowers, and landscapes and about what makes gardens special and beautiful. It’s also about the photography of gardens. If you like gardens, I hope you’ll also like my photography of the natural world, ranging from the mundane to the grand, and use my book as a kind of armchair traveler might, to enjoy many aspects of the world of nature, from my backyard to France, Japan, and beyond.

Just to be clear: Creative Garden Photography is not just about gardens. This is a book focused on the intersection of gardens and all that can be in gardens, as well as photography and photographic techniques. I don’t think considering photography solely as a narrow and technical topic works. You can’t really contemplate garden photography without considering landscapes, lighting, and flower photography; in other words, the whole of photography of the natural world.

It is a photographic truism that to really capture the essence of a subject you need to understand it, and why you are photographing in the first place. Putting this another way, I like to say to my workshop students, Want to take better photos? Stand in front of more interesting things. Want to take really better photos? Become a more interesting person.

In the context of garden photography, becoming a more interesting person means getting a better understanding of what gardens are about, what kinds of gardens there are, where a specific garden fits in this framework, and what the components of a garden are. What makes a garden special? How can the unique sense of an individual place be rendered in imagery? What is the best way to photograph a flower?

Good photography of flowers is predicated on knowledge of light, lighting, photographic technique, and a sense of color theory. It’s also important to know how to use a tripod and how to take advantage of the characteristics of depth of field. Some knowledge of botany can lead to even richer photos. Knowing more about flowers means one can take advantage of the blatant and riotous floral display of color and botanical sexuality to create excitement and feeling in an image that might otherwise seem run of the mill.

Baltazar Chrysanthemum—The Baltazar chrysanthemum is a new hybridized version of the spider chrysanthemum introduced in the Netherlands. This flower was created to travel well and have a long life as a cut flower in a vase, as well as to look spectacular in a garden.

I photographed this Baltazar chrysanthemum using a macro lens with a camera facing straight down on the flower blossom on a black velvet background (see pages 272–279 for information on this technique).

Nikon D850, 50mm Zeiss Makro-Planar, 1/15 of a second at f/11 and ISO 64, tripod mounted.

Pretty Pink Peony—I love peonies! When I set out to make a series of macro images showing the centers of a few peonies, I decided to try to emphasize the luscious quality of one of my favorite flower species.

Nikon D850, 150mm Dragonfly macro, 6 seconds at f/32 and ISO 64, tripod mounted.

From the viewpoint of Creative Garden Photography, a garden involves flowers or plants, and perhaps some human cultivation, as these fit into the landscape. A real gardeny garden probably means there has been active garden landscape design with the intention of creating specific effects. Usually, but not always, these effects are visual—but there are also gardens primarily designed to attract pollinators, to smell good, for medicinal purposes, and for other non-visual reasons.

Personally, I don’t think gardens need to be fancy. Many of the ideas in Creative Garden Photography can be applied to create interesting and compelling imagery in a tumble-down backyard gone to weed and seed. This kind of informal lab for photographic image-making can be more exciting to the photographer than the most hoity-toity, fenced-off-with-boxwood-hedges-and-paths French garden.

For photographers, a garden as I’ve defined it allows the development of the technical tools of the craft as well as a deeply honed sense of place that can be taken out to the entire universe of almost all photographic subjects.

I’ve written Creative Garden Photography from two perspectives. The first is that to get a really profound image of a flower or a garden, you need to have a true and deep sense in your heart of why the flower or the garden matters, and why you care about it. In other words, the underlying idea and soul of the garden is important, and how you relate to it is even more important.

My photographs of botanicals and gardens in this book, the case studies and stories behind the images, and the meditations and thoughts about gardens generally are intended to help you arrive at your own sense of self and place when you approach the flowers, gardens, and landscapes you’d like to photograph.

Creative Garden Photography is also very much about the technique and craft of photography. What are the challenges, techniques, and best practices? What gear do you need? What are the specific issues that come up in flower and garden photography, such as focus, focus stacking, macro work, and lighting? How can creative camera techniques best be deployed in the context of garden and flower photography?

If you are interested in gardens and flowers, then take a look at the photos and case studies in Creative Garden Photography. If you are interested in becoming a better photographer of flowers, plants, places, landscapes, and—yes!—gardens, then my hope is you will find the technique sections of Creative Garden Photography enlightening, helpful, and valuable.

Berkeley, California

Park Vista—Just outside Paris, connected to Paris’s urban core via the regional railroad, lies the Parc de Sceaux (pronounced so). The Parc de Sceaux is a vast, organized area created by André Le Nôtre. It is not as well known, but just as magnificent as some of Le Nôtre’s other creations such as Versailles and the Tuileries.

On a cool spring afternoon, I enjoyed wandering the paths and vistas of the Parc de Sceaux, and stopped to make this inviting image of a park bench beside one of the wide ways.

For more about photographing the French style of garden, see pages 26–33.

Nikon D300, 22mm, six exposures with shutter speeds ranging from 1/30 of a second to 3 seconds, each exposure at f/25 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.

Photo Captions through Page 17

Cover: Sunflower Panorama—I love sunflowers! They are bright, they are yellow, and they remind me of a sunny day and the colorful paintings of Vincent van Gogh. How can you not feel cheerful when you look at a sunflower? As I made this lively sunflower panorama, I tried to convey the same positive attitude that sunflowers always convey to me. This light-box composition was quite wide, so I shot the left side first, then the right. In order to achieve a wide tonal range, I made six bracketed exposures of each side.

Nikon D300, 40mm macro, twelve total exposures, each exposure at f/11 and ISO 100, panorama exposed in two panels, each panel with six exposures, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/13 of a second to 4 seconds, tripod mounted; for more about light box photography, turn to pages 224–257.

Front piece: Buddha—The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Seal Harbor, Maine, displays numerous eclectic Orientalia surrounding a floral hedge garden. It is particularly notable for its portals, openings, and transitions—for example, the round passage to the Buddha statue shown in this photo.

Nikon D850, 90mm, 1/400 of a second at f/8 and ISO 64, hand held.

Title page: Giverny Afternoon—One of my favorite places in the world are the water lily ponds in Monet’s famous gardens at Giverny, France. Most likely, you are familiar with the way Monet rendered the water in his lily ponds in his famous paintings. I was fortunate enough to photograph the gardens at Giverny in the late afternoon after the crowds had left, and in this image I emphasized the floral aspects of the banks of the water, rather than the pond itself.

Nikon D850, 28mm, 1.6 seconds at f/22 and ISO 31, tripod mounted.

Copyright page: Sunflower—I spent a wonderful day photographing at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens near Boothbay Harbor, Maine. In mid-summer, the garden is filled with an incredible array of flowers. With this image of a sunflower, I intentionally opened my macro lens to its widest aperture to use low depth-of-field to create a soft effect on the petals.

Nikon D850, 50mm Zeiss Makro-Planar, 1/250 of a second at f/2.0 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.

Page 7: Simple Tulip—Part of the point of having a flower garden is to enjoy cut flowers like this tulip placed in a simple vase on a white background.

Nikon D810, 55mm Zeiss Otus, five exposures with shutter speeds ranging from 0.6 to 10 seconds, each exposure at f/16 and ISO 64, tripod mounted.

Pages 14–15: Into the Vortex of the Universe—I created this complex and somewhat chaotic composition of flowers on a light box and captured it using the techniques explained starting on page 224.

Nikon D800, 55mm Zeiss Otus, seven exposures at shutter speeds ranging from 1/30 of a second to 2 seconds, each exposure at f/16 and ISO 100, tripod mounted.

Opposite: Dandelion in Calvignac—One of my favorite things to do in life is to get down on my belly on a sunny day when there has been mist and dew overnight, and photograph dandelions. I know that to most gardeners dandelions are pests, but the difference between a weed and a flower is surely definitional, and to me dandelions are paradise. There is an innate structure to the dandelion that is surely unequaled in the kingdom of flora.

With this dandelion, I woke early before even the croissants had been delivered in the Lot River Valley of Southwestern France. Wandering down towards the river, I came upon this lone dandelion, rasing its head from a dark patch of shade that the sun had not yet found. I underexposed by 2.5 EVs to capture the internal seedpods of the dandelion and also to allow the already dark background to go very dark.

Nikon D850, 50mm Zeiss Makro-Planar, 1/13 of a second at f/20 and ISO 200, tripod mounted.

For information about the cameras and lenses mentioned in the photo captions in this book, and their relationship to sensor size, see page 352.

Entering the Garden

Ghosts in the Enchanted Garden—In André Le Nôtre’s Parc de Sceaux gardens, the fountains are only turned on for holidays. Consider the incredible engineering feat it was to create this display in the seventeenth century!

I photographed the water display in the Parc de Sceaux from the top of the progression of fountains to show the sequential nature. I also used two shutter speeds: one faster, intended to capture the water in motion, and one slower in order to show a smoothing effect on the water in the pools and to capture the reflections. The point of this complicated process was to show both silky slow-motion water along with crisp spray from the fountains.

Nikon D800, 70mm, six total exposures; three exposures at f/8 and ISO 320, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/500 to 1/80 of a second; and three additional exposures at f/32 and ISO 50, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/6 of a second to 1.3 seconds; tripod mounted.

Understanding Gardens

gar·den: /'gärd(ə)n/

noun: a piece of ground used to grow vegetables, fruit, herbs, or flowers.

verb: cultivate or work in a garden.

What is a garden?

Although you may feel that you intuitively know a garden when you see one, this is a surprisingly controversial and tricky issue. It is important, though, for one’s overall understanding of the garden.

First, let’s pick apart something I just wrote in the previous paragraph that may have gone past you without additional comment. (Oh yes, I can be devious!)

I wrote that you likely know a garden when you see one. Surprisingly, this echoes the famous United States Supreme Court dictum regarding obscenity: You can’t define it, but you know it when you see it. Be that as it may, the real problem here is with the assumption that gardens are limited to the sense of sight. Gardens can also be felt, smelled, touched, heard, and sensed with one’s eyes closed.

Gardens figure largely in humanity’s sense of their own history. It is hard to think about gardens without recalling the travails of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis in the Bible. Whatever else may be said about this biblical episode, it is clear that the garden represents a delightful and innocent existence.

Shadow in the Temple Garden—I photographed this rock garden on the grounds of a temple in Kyoto, Japan. You can see the shadow of the temple roof on the left side of the image.

Of course, a garden such as this requires constant maintenance over the centuries to keep its form and shapes. This maintenance is itself a kind of statement about the purpose of the garden. The garden demonstrates that the temple is wealthy enough to be able to afford the continuous labor this garden has required over the long years.

The ritualized shapes of this garden are intended to echo the visual impact of raindrops on a still pond as the rain begins on a cloudy day.

Nikon D800, 48mm, 1/400 of a second at f/14 and ISO 400, hand held.

Hydrangea and Carnation Petals—In my opinion, gardens do not have to be very big. In fact, in the garden I created and photographed in this image, you are looking at an image that is on macro scale. The entire width of this garden, photographed on my light box, is about 3" (roughly 7.5 cm).

My idea in creating this image was to convey a sense of happiness. Generally, when I am in a garden I am happy. I believe one of the most important functions of a garden is to make people happy. To visually convey happiness in this image, I contrasted the vivid red carnation petals with the more subdued but beautifully blue hydrangea petals.

Nikon D850, Zeiss Makro-Planar 50mm, five exposures at f/22 and ISO 64, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/30 of a second to 5 seconds, tripod mounted.

For much of the prehistory of humanity, hunger was a constant companion. Just as the Garden of Eden represents a peaceful and verdant existence without struggle, having the ability to plant and maintain a garden is insurance against hunger, and an important bulwark against starvation.

As history progressed from the pre-recorded mythological to the times of the Romans and Greeks, gardens became a status symbol. Moving forward through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to current times, for a society, public gardens represented a surplus of wealth and stability. For wealthy individuals gardens were one way to display status, along with many other status symbols, including in no particular order, large tail fins on cars, the height of towers in a Tuscan city, and the ostentation and display of formal dress.

To summarize, gardens are important as a public resource and a place for people to enjoy themselves. Almost as far back as humanity can recall, gardens have also been an important indicator of status.

In addition, gardens can and do provide functional purposes, including the growth of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. A striking example of the functional garden is the formalized medicinal garden found in many important Medieval monasteries.

But wait! Is this all there is? Gardens are a public joy and a way for rich people to show their visual sensitivity. They are also a place where you find fruit trees and echinacea. Isn’t there more?

This is where things get subjective. In the account of a prominent scholar of gardening, a inner-city arrangement of old tires should be considered a garden. Some Japanese Zen gardens are beautifully made of gravel and stone. Is there any limit to what a garden is? If not, what is the point of using the term garden to describe a particular kind of photography?

These are great questions. But I don’t want to get us too bogged down in issues of taxonomy. From the point of view of this book, a garden has the following characteristics:

Some form of enclosure or separation from the world at large

Human design, planning, and cultivation

Most likely, at least some decorative intent

Usually, but not always, predominance of botanical items in the design of the garden (the Zen rock garden I just mentioned would be an exception)

This is an ad-hoc working definition, but it’s good enough to get started. From the viewpoint of the photographer, the elements that trigger going into garden photographer mode start with the enclosure and with the botanical element.

To learn to be a good garden photographer, one must train one’s eye to work with the natural and unnatural landscape in enclosed spaces. If you can combine this with spectacular photography of plants and flowers, then you will be well on your way to becoming an accomplished and creative garden photographer.

Cloisters—The Monasterio de la Magdalena is along the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail just outside Sarria, Spain. The monastery was built in the twelfth century, about the same time that the town of Sarria was founded. Today, it is used in part as a hostel, or albergue, for pilgrims. I found this beautiful camellia tree blooming in a cloister garden.

iPhone 6s, processed in Waterlogue and Image Blender.

André Le Nôtre and the French Garden

His grandfather was in charge of the gardens at the Palais de Tuileries. His father was a gardener for the royal family. His uncle and cousin were gardeners.

Born into an important family of gardeners, André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) is one of the best-known garden designers of all time, despite the fact that he left no legacy of writing about his gardens. All we have to understand his work are his gardens. These include most of the major public gardens of France, including Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fontainebleau, Versailles, the Tuileries, and many, many more.

Besides gardens in France, Le Nôtre provided the design for Greenwich Park and Windsor Castle in London, and the gardens of the Venaria Reale and Castle of Racconigi in Italy, and he contributed designs for Charlottenburg Palace in Germany.

Bust of André Le Nôtre—In Paris, entering the Tuileries Garden from the Place de la Concorde, a bust of André Le Nôtre occupies a place of honor in a niche on the left, along with a list of many of the gardens he designed.

Nikon D850, 40mm, 1/800 of a second at f/8 and ISO 400, hand held.

Along with the garden of Versailles, Le Nôtre also devised the city plan for Versailles, which is a very symmetrical plan with radiating avenues, circles, and broad straight promenades. This design was the inspiration for the L’Enfant plan, the master design for Washington, D.C., approved by George Washington and created by Major Pierre Charles L’Enfant, a French engineer who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

What gave the gardens designed by André Le Nôtre such immense popularity during his lifetime? Why can we immediately recognize a garden that is in whole or in part inspired by the principles of Le Nôtre’s gardens?

There are a number of factors at work here. First, it should be said that most of Le Nôtre’s gardens could not be constructed today due to practical considerations of cost and that the land for the garden is already in use. Essentially, Le Nôtre designed gardens for aristocrats for whom cost was no object, and who could sweep any occupants of the desired acreage out of the way by fiat. Did the high-handed way in which Le Nôtre’s gardens were created help lead to the French Revolution? Perhaps, but that is a thesis for another time.

The Road Goes Ever On—Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s chief minister, hired André Le Nôtre to create the gardens for his own Chateau de Sceaux,