Gardening Through a Lens

Summer Yellows: Rudbeckia as the Antidote in a Dry Season

2015-08-17T14:36:00.001-07:00

The predominant color on our property right now is the dull, brittle yellow of the lawn. We've had lots of heat and next to no rain (except for those glorious couple of days last week). Luckily, up here, a green lawn this time of year is NOT something to be proud of.

Below is a closeup right after David mowed the weeds, um, "lawn" in the back. I think there's a crushed Douglas Fir cone in there too. You can see a few blades of green proving that

there indeed was grass here at one time.

Yes, in the rainy Northwest, "real" gardeners know to just let their lawn (if they even HAVE a lawn) go dormant in the summer and leave the spring and autumn rains to green them up for a couple of seasons. Watering is for food and flowers.

But the more enjoyable yellow of summer is from Black-Eyed Susans, whole swaths of them planted in public spaces as well as private gardens. Even while we're wilting, they look insanely cheerful.

Sometimes I resent all those waving, yipping heads of Rudbeckia. It's HOT! Why are you so HAPPY! This is NOT what I moved north for! Where are my clouds? My muted light? My beloved gloom? Where's my damp? Ok. Ok. Deep breath, Emily, get a grip.

The colors are beautiful and rich and definitely NOT dead and crunchy!

And when you get really close to just one of those blooms, the glare turns to glow and then to a radiance I can't even begin to capture with my camera. But, trust me, it made me smile.

Although August has never been my favorite month--either here or in SoCal--there are tomatoes and blackberries to pick, chilled Rose to drink, and some yellow worth admiring.

All the Things I Do Not See

2015-07-30T20:09:00.001-07:00

As much as I try to compose my photographs before I take them, I never see everything that's in the frame. Sometimes I shoot too quickly when breezes threaten to jiggle a perfectly lit petal or just as I'm about to squeeze the shutter release, two other photographers walk right into the edge of the shot. Thanks to digital cameras, I can review the images I just took and catch most of the more blatant blunders.

However, I firmly believe that the invisible garden imps almost always add a little something just before I upload my day's work to the computer. Then the nasty little buggers wait for me to start post-processing and have a laugh. Did I take that? When? I didn't take that! Why didn't I see that leaf, person, tree, humungous bee? What's that stick coming out of Ingmar's head? Did a bird poop on that David Austin Rosa ‘Ausleap’ Sweet Juliet? When? You get the idea.

At least I've made progress. Four years ago, this horse photo gave me a lot of experience in corrective post-processing. Along with other, minor problems, there was a big honkin' fence running across the lower third of the horse. It didn't look rural or vintage. It just looked bad. And it took FOREVER to get rid of while leaving all the horse bits and each bloody blade of grass intact. I learned a lot from that and gained a lot of skill. And when I had the chance to have a sort of well-known photographer give me feedback on my work, of course I included that shot.

He said it was nice (oh no, kill me now), he said it had a romantic feel to it, and then he asked, "What's that big wooden bench-like thing on the horse's back?" Huh? Where? Damn. I looked at every inch of that photograph for HOURS. How did I miss that? What IS that? "You've got to look at your images more carefully," was what he said. Yup.

Today I was outside with my macro lens taking pictures, hoping for some bloggy inspiration. One patch of Echinacea was doing well, so I set up a tripod and started shooting. Bright, cheery, colorful, blah. Finally, I changed my angle and tried for a dive into the center of just one specimen. I was concentrating so hard on getting all those little florets in the head of the flower in focus that I didn't look at what else was going on, figuring I'd just crop out everything else. However, the imps had other ideas.

The only shot with the inflorescence in semi-decent focus had petals from a neighboring Coneflower flopping over a third of it. When did THAT happen? Did I want to spend an hour trying to clone out those petals and clone the florets back in? Not really. I was just about to head outside to reposition and reshoot, when it hit me: I like this image. It's a lot more interesting than the one I'd planned. Well OK then!

I also spent time experimenting with these Astilbe chinensis. Unlike their feathery cousins that come up in spring, these nubbly ones really get going by mid-summer. I wanted to emphasize the nubbles, but wasn't having a lot of success. They're pretty and look like what they are, but something was missing. Not that I had a clue what that was.

Once more the imps had their way with me. When did I take this shot? Was I standing above the plant, shooting downwards? Is this a side-on view that needs to be rotated?

Maybe, but I like it better this way. It looks like some sort of deep-sea creature, one of those blind ones that swims close to the bottom of the ocean in the dark. It also expresses what I like best about these Astilbes.

The most common post-processing surprises are insects. Unless it flies and is a butterfly or has a stinger, I'm just not seeing it. Here's a Scabiosa, and, as a photograph, what can you say? Pretty flower, maybe, but I wanted more.

Then something caught my eye--most of you probably already saw it--so I cropped in to take a better look.

What IS this green-glowing critter? I really would like to know, by the way. And getting in this close, I got to share just a tiny bit of his experience of the flower, fall into another world entirely. Also, the common name, "Pincushion Flower" makes a lot more sense to me now. Post-processing surprises can sometimes be the very best sort. And, yes, my personal imps don't always mean to ruin my day.

Unexpected Garden Glamour: Runway Monardas

2015-07-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

I am fickle when it comes to plants. One year it was Polemoniums, the next Astilbes, then Pieris, and Penstemons. I shopped for them as though I'd just discovered a rare beauty and needed to populate my gardens with my new obsessions before the world caught on. But soon I'd tire of my favorites and find my eye wandering to a newer cultivar, a more appealing hue, a plant with a truer sense of style.

It never occurred to me that the feathery, bee-laden Monardas happily populating the sunnier patches of my landscape were the stuff of Haute Horticouture. Too common. Too artless. Too friendly.

But then I noticed the dynamic pose struck by this young Bee Balm. One leaf gestures with confidence, arrow-head straight, while the other is gently rounded, pointing earthwards. The red, tubular flowers reveal themselves gradually, with just the suggestion of a double emerging from its crown. How could I have missed this!?

Not long after, this other specimen took center stage, and could hardly be more alluring. Here was a more mature sense of self-possession, knowing how much (or how little) to reveal. How much stem to show in order to balance out the sly tilt of the double (veiled by the artfully veined sepals). She even knew which way to turn for the most flattering light. My admiration knew no bounds.

However, all this flash and attitude has its limits. I was beginning to ache for a quieter, more subtle expression. And, on the other side of my propane tank, I found the soft beauty I was looking for.

Monarda didyma 'Blaustrumpf'

These two charming 'Blaustrumpf's glowed with an innocent yet powerful grace. They drew me to the shade, to the subtlety of flat, even light, to a more natural look. No artifice here. A pose without posing. Naked existence as elegance. With the tank providing a nice, neutral backdrop, I'd even discovered a new approach to domestic landscape photography:

Industrial Chic for the Garden

Alas, I find I have a limited tolerance for youth's scrubbed, pretty face and admit to a weakness for the more theatrical side of nature. (And the propane guy had just arrived to fill the tank). So this jester's hat of a Bee Balm bloom brought me back into the sun. No secrets here, just the generous eruption of scarlet petals in a sea of unfocused green.

But I am no shallow photographer. I can appreciate the wisdom, complexity, and, yes, the prickly peace of age. This Monarda seedhead has one last red petal hanging on as a reminder of earlier days--a week or so before. What remains is Nature's ultimate sculpture, the repository of future generations. Too soon powdery mildew will leave my once buoyant models beyond even Photoshop's rejuvenative skills. And, once again, I am left to haunt the nurseries for fresh faces and new inspirations.

Intimations of Forgotten Worlds: Plant Design Without a Decoder Ring

2015-07-16T13:21:00.001-07:00

The Los Angeles neighborhood of my childhood was not my true home; I was certain of it. That's not to say that I felt/hoped/believed myself to have been adopted. No, I was certain I was disguised (against my will) as human.

So everyday I searched for signs in the garden, convinced my real lineage was seared here and there into the flesh of this earth, in this dimension. And one day those clues would be revealed, and I would know and in that instant be transported home to my real family in my true form. Sometimes the message would be in a massing of petals in the cracks between middle-class patio stones.

Other times I'd notice the way bare shrub branches curved against a mossy wall.

As I grew a bit older, the messages became more complicated, the syntax of limbs and lichen, rigid stone and flowing wood confounding my best efforts to decipher the code surely left for me.

Even simple tree trunks drew yet resisted my attention.

The years passed and the evidence that I was simply a human female gained credibility, while the symbols promising a more genuine sense of myself remained inscrutable. I didn't even have a superpower; and tree bark became just tree bark.

However, once I picked up a camera, plant portraits soon took the place of family vacation snapshots. Studying these silent images through a lens seemed to bring something into focus.

Water drops became worlds and leaf surfaces were dark matter revealed.

And even flower petals hinted at an ancient writing system.

Or they're just a way of attracting pollinators. And rain that beads up on leaves says more about surface tension and texture than interstellar mapping. And tree bark is the skin of tree guts. I know this.

But I also know that imagination sometimes feels like memory. And memories can shape the deepest parts of ourselves.

I'm also someone who if (when?) she heard that distinctive Tardis wheeze, would SO turn around expecting to see Doctor Who. First I'd demand to know what took him so long, and then all those lost languages and unreadable texts would come into focus. I'd remember who and what I was. And I would be home.

Go For the Blur

2015-07-09T18:24:00.000-07:00

Photographers can get obsessed with sharpness and with good reason. Eyes, in my experience, seem to want to concentrate on what takes the least amount of work. Staring at something that's blurry is tiring. So eyes will search for a focal point (like autofocus in a camera), moving around the visual field, pulling in and out until they can achieve that place where seeing is effortless and the subject is clear. No matter the depth of field (the distance between the closest and furthest objects that remain in focus), having the thing you want viewers to gravitate to completely in focus makes sense. Also, sharp photos just look nice.

It's definitely easier to get a subject in focus if that subject holds still. Here's a picture of Bailey (note the shallow depth-of-field--cat eyes and nose sharp while flowers and cat body not so much). He is not holding still for me; I believe he is focusing elsewhere, like on a vole or a bug. So he is holding still so as not to scare off his potential prey. No matter; he stopped moving long enough for me to take a sharp photo.

However, I mostly shoot pictures of plants, and shouting "stop moving" doesn't really work all that well (it doesn't work on cats either). So a crucial problem anyone who likes to shoot plants has is that they have a tendency to respond quite quickly to their immediate environment. And as much as I enjoy breathing, air makes my job a lot harder. It just takes a whiff for my subject to shimmy. And all the tripods and remote shutter releases in the world won't help. If I can't use a fast shutter speed, I've got to sacrifice the depth of field I want, and if I up the ISO I'll have to deal with noise (sorry for the tech-speak--just trust me; it's a thing). This means I spend a lot of time waiting for the breezes to subside, which is pleasant, I admit. But it can get frustrating too.

Bellingham has been having a very unusual heat wave. And here in my little microclimate from hell, it's been oven-hot. NOT what I moved north from Los Angeles for. So standing outside in a breeze this morning was heaven . . . and then, not so much because I was trying to photograph flowers on stalks. No polite flutters and then the calm. These suckers just wave around like they're hailing a cab in a crowd after an Everly Brothers Reunion concert. After a lot of waiting, fidgeting, resetting settings, and more waiting, I decided toss my plans to the winds, use a slow shutter speed, and see what the blurs would look like.

Here's a Veronica spicata 'Ulster Blue Dwarf', also known as Speedwell. No wind. Sharp(ish) focus on the closest stalk.

Now, here comes the wind. Yes, the focused one was taken earlier in the season, but let's not quibble.

This is what is known as "blur." If you move your eyes back and forth, from the sharp one to the blurry one and back really quickly, the blurry one will start to look more like painting. Or like a blurry photo.
OK. Let's try again. Below is a photo of another Veronica spicata but now a 'Giles van Hees'.

And here comes the wind:

At this point I'm going to provide some information to distract you. I did not know that Veronica wasn't the common name, but the genus. Although no one seems willing to go on record as being certain, most of the sources I consulted agreed that the name was probably associated with the Veronica who it was said gave Jesus her veil to wipe his forehead on his way to Calvary. When he returned it, the cloth supposedly bore his likeness: vera icon = true image. As for naming the plant after her or the cloth, that becomes a little less clear (yes, pun/reference intended here to show that this IS all connected to my topic). Some sources say that the likeness on the veil resembled the flowers of the plant. Sharp or blurry, I just don't quite see it. Now the common name--Speedwell--makes a bit more sense. As an medicinal herb, it is purported to have several healing qualities--much like an Christian icon might have for some believers.

So what I have taken away from my little experiment: While some blurs can work artistically or can be used to convey a sense of motion, I think I'd rather wait out most breezes and attempt to catch the moment when my Speedwell holds still.

Doors of Reflection

2015-07-02T14:25:00.001-07:00

Doors are welcoming, forbidding, challenging, simple,

and filled with potential. Well, not the doors themselves. It's what they lead to, or might lead to, or might not. And all those possibilities that lie on the other side of that door, all of them live in your head, occupying the same space at the same time (string theory, anyone?). Because you just don't know for sure. Of course you could simply turn the handle and find out. However, opening the door and stepping through stops that activity cold. You have your one and only answer.

Sometimes it's better to wait a few minutes, sit in imagination, and conjure up the rooms on the other side. This lilac painted door below could open onto an elaborate garden shed filled with shelves of hand-painted pots and trays of herb seedlings, or it might reveal a converted barn, furnished tastefully (if austerely) in minimalist Tuscan.

I wonder how dark this basement-level apartment to the right is. All the light seems to be living outdoors with the plants, huddled against the walls of the subterranean courtyard. I'd guess that the inhabitants might want to spend all their time outside, tending the flower pots, chatting with each other, but there aren't any chairs.

The climbing roses brighten and scent this entry, but the door looks like it would take not just a key but a pretty strong shove to open, resisting all visitors (unless they came bearing cake). And yet, the chair on the right might suggest that the owner likes spending time out front, welcoming company, but it could also say, "Wait here while I consider my options."

I've spent a lot of time behind closed doors in my life. I like my privacy. I like to feel quiet and safe. I like wandering the halls of my mind, uninterrupted--unless someone is offering cake.

When you've spent years indoors, the out-of-doors can be a bit, well, unnerving because the outside, the stuff on the other-side of your side, is always changing. Indoors, unless someone likes redecorating, can stay exactly the same (except for the odd cake crumb). But outdoors changes with the season, time of day, and weather (a subset of the prior two). Open the door twice, three times, fifty times, and you'll always be surprised.

Then there are garden doors.

This wooden door on the right looks as strong and almost as forbidding as the one above. Both have brick walls and plants softening the angles with their green curves. But when one knows (or at least has a pretty good hunch) that this door opens onto more of the same, well then, the surprise is always a good one. There might as well be no door at all, as with this archway below.

Garden doors have this advantage; there is no inside and outside. There is only this garden and that garden and the narrow space formed by the arch or doorway to huddle in when it rains.

But my favorite really is the heavy door that stands slightly ajar. There is that moment of expectation experienced from that place of safety and imagination. Possibilities exist, change, and grow, just a step or two away.

Okay. Yes, I know this door is wide open, not "slightly ajar," but I like this photo, and you get the idea.

Benched: Rethinking Gardens, Photography, and Blogging

2015-06-25T15:23:00.000-07:00


Bodnant Garden, North Wales

It's been nine months since my last blog post, and I confess (couldn't resist, sorry) that I didn't think I'd be coming back. But after reading some posts about the Toronto Garden Bloggers' Fling and especially about the talk Gayla Trail gave about resisting/rejecting the urge to make money and/or accrue followers, I felt the urge to rethink my approach.

Garden Path at Snowshill Manor in The Cotswolds

Bodnant Garden

Add to that the fact that I've been riding the photography roller-coaster known as microstock since January. This is the field where you get micro-pay for taking technically perfect (at the friggin' pixel level) photos of stuff other people might want to use to illustrate [fill in blank].

While I learned a lot and improved a lot, I found myself taking way too many shots of gravel, tree bark, doors, and hands planting flowers with lots of space to the left or right. I also spent too much time staring at noise, pixels, and things I had no names for and couldn't see at reasonable sizes.

Even my flower portraits were reduced to colored squares and fuzzy stuff. There were few real ideas and no love. And I was rejecting shots that didn't fit the microstock commercial mold or meet the technical requirements. But what about my requirements? They receded--as did I--further and further into the background.


The Glades, Surrey, Canada

Maybe I'm approaching this all wrong. There are just too many people with too many cameras to "compete." Anyone can take a picture. Mine aren't the best or the worst, and the somewhere in between is too broad and varied a field to even begin discussing. But I still like to take pictures of things I like looking at.

I garden. Not well, not often enough for public display. But I like looking at plants and digging around in the dirt. I enjoy growing things, and when I end up killing some of the things I tried to grow, I enjoy learning about why they died.

I can put words together better than some but not enough words or often enough.

So I have some skills, and I have some activities I sometimes let myself enjoy. And I still have a blog--at least I still have the name and the space.

So I'm going to find a nice bench in a garden, sit awhile, and think my own thoughts. And enjoy the view.

Hidcote Manor Garden, Gloucestershire

Cataract Surgery: It's REALLY BRIGHT out there!

2014-09-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

I had no idea I had cataracts until about 2 years ago when my optometrist informed me that they were starting to show up. Since, for most people, cataracts grow slowly, he told me I'd have nothing to worry about for several years. However, I am not most people, and mine responded like Creeping Buttercup on MiracleGro. My surgeries were done in July.

Let me say again that I hadn't a clue that my eyesight was impaired more than needing distance glasses and reading glasses . . . and computer glasses (that also doubled as my "cooking glasses" for chopping and measuring, etc.). But after the first surgery (on the particularly bad left eye), trite or not, a whole new world opened up! My eyes became a kind of toy: I'd go around covering up one eye and then switching. The difference was stunning! My "new" left eye beheld a bright--almost too bright--world with whites whiter than I remembered. Colors popped, especially pinks, reds, and blues. When I changed and looked through my right eye alone it was as if a dull, brownish haze had settled over everything. I walked around shifting hands and eyes and laughing like some sort of demented eye-chart patient.

For this blog, I'd wanted to find images for before-and-after examples of my pre- and post-surgical light and color vision, but that wasn't really possible. Although I shoot a lot of my macro pictures in manual, I still rely on at least some exposure information from my camera. And later, when I did post-processing in Lightroom, the Histogram (a graph display of brightness levels) kept me from blowing out (over-exposing and washing out) the whites when I tried to increase the exposure of images that looked awfully dark to me. As for color, I guess I mostly just accepted what I saw.

What I've done here is use images I took between the two surgeries (yes, I had to go back and forth between my eyes) to attempt to give you an idea of the change. A little extreme, maybe, but not too terribly far off the mark.

As mentioned above, blues and reds, pinks and purples all popped. Greens didn't change that much. But everything was brighter, MUCH brighter.

While I am ecstatic about the almost psychedelic world I'm now seeing (I really do walk around saying "oh wow, like wow"), I'd opted for vision correction in addition to cataract removal. So one less pair of glasses is one or two more procedures away, and, right now, none of my glasses work. The world is bright, colorful, but not as clear as it will be.

Something more to look forward to.

Winter Flowering: Pink Dawn Viburnum

2014-03-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

My three Pink Dawn Viburnums (Viburnum x bodnantense 'Pink Dawn') started to bud on December 24, 2013, but didn't get around to letting a flower peak through until mid-February.

I figured I'd write a blog about them as soon as I had a range of photos, but what to write? I researched (Googled and went through all my books) trying to find something odd or interesting or, at least, oddly interesting, but no luck.

Early to flower, light fragrance, zones 5-7, 8 or 9--depending on the source--nice fall color, cross between V. farreri and V. grandiflorum, etc. Fine, all fine, but why post photos and info when the info was everywhere? This isn't what I wanted my blog to be.

As I was doing the dishes today, I realized what I could say (this sort of thing always seems to happen when I'm washing the dishes or in the shower. Something about water? Difficulty in holding a pen and dousing a notepad suggests inspiration?) And what I could say is the following:

I love to walk into mature gardens filled with open flowers. All those shapes and all that color is just one enormous, loud "Hi there!" All those "faces" are like friends of-the-moment, made at an especially fun party. The kind of effortless, immediate camaraderie that feels like an unexpected gift.

Yeah. Well. I love those moments, I do. But there's something in me--as mostly a Macro photographer--that needs to plan, work ( and suffer ) for longer, perhaps deeper relationships. I like to take time, get as close as possible to individual plants, destroy my knees, and photograph that conversation.

So these photos, taken from early bud to last sagging flowers, reflect my relationship with my Pink Dawns over these last few months.

The buds, with all their fuzzy bits and pink bits and green bits, intrigued and excited me at first. It was hard to tell what would unfold where. But the weeks went on and on and my impatience and frustration grew. Would they never open? Would they just dry up and just fall off in the cold?

Then one morning in February when I walked out into the garden for a bud-check, the fuzzy bits had peeled back and the pink bits had pushed out and open. Just a few, but enough to give me hope (and a few shots).

However, not longer after, we got slammed by 18 inches of snow (see my March 3rd post for what that looked like). I couldn't even locate the plants much less the fragile blooms.

But when the snow finally melted and the sun came back, the flowers quickly multiplied, with the wind rarely letting them hold still long enough for decent shots!

When the little trumpet blooms were so much paler than the buds it all seemed pointless, until they multiplied and scented the air (if you stuck your nose right into them--easy enough to do when you're on your knees, inches from them). And lastly--at this point--all the buds opened to a sigh and a sag. All that effort. Surely it was worth it.

But don't get me wrong. In the right mood, I can definitely enjoy a big, crazy party with lots of superficial relationships!

Snow Days

2014-03-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

Eighteen inches. It snowed eighteen inches in one day. Now some of you are rolling your eyes and laughing at this. Some of you see eighteen inches of snow in two hours. Some of you only see snow when you watch the Winter Olympics (and why are YOU watching winter sports you’d never participate in since you are without anything deserving the name "winter"? Yes, this former Californian has become a winter-snob). However, SOME of us aren’t used to eighteen inches of snow in one day.

Nor are we accustomed to having the ground so saturated and the temperature so consistently below freezing that our gardens are hidden from view, and our snow-heavy trees are bent so far over they look ironically like arbors at Santa’s Village.

I turn around just in time to see the Douglas Firs and Western Red Cedars menace our house with their white bulk. They fill the air with groans and sudden cracks as another limb breaks from the trunk and crashes to the ground.

But when it just barely started to warm up, when the sun burned through the iron-grey skies for just a few hours, something lovely happened. First, a few large mounds of snow slid off a branch of one of our towering trees and crashed to the ground with sparks of snow-bits leaping into the air. Then another. And then another. They had held on through the snow-weight and cold. Now, the newly released branches sprang back up into place, animating the frozen forest. So magical. Then so many that it seemed like arboreal slapstick. Alas, no photos. Too busy watching and laughing.

Then the ice in the pond began to break up and recede, and a few ducks attempted a swim. Soon, I think, it might be spring.

Sheeple and Their People

2014-01-22T15:29:00.002-08:00

"Sheeple" is how our good friends, Yvonne and Doug, refer to their resident flock. They have personalities, moods, rather expressive faces. And, when they vocalize, they are amazingly loud. Who knew?

Not long after lambing, 2012

When I was a child, I'd dreamed of roaming green hillsides, frolicking with goats and lambs. But Los Angeles didn't offer any such landscape. It was the stuff of story-books.

So was winter. But here I am in my Muck Boots and thick jacket against the chill in the barn at their Spinners Eden Farm ( http://www.spinnersedenfarm.com/Spinners_Eden_Farm/Home.html ), watching Doug shear some very pregnant ewes and Yvonne pick through the fleece. She's a spinner/weaver/knitter, and, at first, they'd planned to raise a "spinner's flock" with a few angora goats, alpacas, and sheep for Yvonne's own personal use. She found that she especially loved spinning wool from CVM (California Variegated Mutant) /Romeldale sheep (http://arcainc.org/ ), so that's the breed they raise.

Bliss

She writes, " Then friends started asking about buying fleece. I didn't think I'd ever have that much. We had our first lambs, Adonis, Bacchus, & Athena. The next year, we cross bred the two rams with the ewes, bought two more champion blacks & a white at Black Sheep Gathering. . . so our flock grew from four sheep to seven, to ten, to . . . 38 right now."

The wool makes them look twice as big as they are, even the pregnant ones!

Holly

Bliss, below, clearly would have preferred some other activity, but she remained pretty calm with the process.

Bliss

Holly

To the left, poor Holly looks like she exploded!

Raising sheep was not their first profession. I asked Doug, an Ob/Gyn, if he'd ever imagined himself doing this; he just laughed and shook his head, before answering "No." But he's as passionate about these lovely, funny creatures as he is about medicine. Just ask him what he learns from living with them; but pull up a chair and plan to stay awhile.

Lens Upgrade Hell

2013-12-11T16:29:00.000-08:00

My walk-around lens (Canon EF-S 17-85mm) choked. On vacation, where it was the only lens I had with me (i.e. "walk-around") it was giving me error messages rather than showing me the image (that it sometimes took anyway) telling me that I needed to clean the contacts. I cleaned them and it continued to choke.

taken just outside of Kelowna, BC, in-between chokes

According to my new, internet lens-buddies, this was a not uncommon occurrence with this lens. And I had my choice of what to do about it: 1) I could send it to Canon, who would charge me more than the lens was worth to fix it; OR 2) I could buy what may-or-may-not be the device that needs fixing on e-bay, buy the tools required to swap out said device, watch videos that purport to demonstrate how to swap out said device that may-or-may-not be the culprit, and then attempt to fix it myself; OR 3) I could take this opportunity to sell the lens (the glass is perfect) and buy an upgrade.

Door number 3.

And thus I embarked on the search for what that upgrade may be. Anyone of you who has ever tried to find the perfect walk-around lens knows that I had just entered the deranged realm of the astigmatic brain and the pixilated gaze. FOR WEEKS!

It was so simple when I was about to purchase my first DSLR. Then it was just a matter of asking for advice on one photo forum and taking what seemed to be the most sensible suggestion. It was the right choice for six years.

Ah, but now that I know more (or just think I do) and am familiar with more sites that are supposed to help me make an informed decision, I spent weeks narrowing my choices down and then rented the two top contenders based on quality and my checkbook. And then went over the same ground that had led me to these two lenses again and again.

The sites that talk about and/or demonstrate lens image quality are wonderful tools and will drive you to drink (or to substantially increased drinking).

The Optometrist Approach: Which is better, number one or number two? The people who go to the enormous trouble of taking lenses through all of their settings with some sort of image quality chart (a popular one shown below as rendered by Stephen H. Westin here: http://www.graphics.cornell.edu/~westin/misc/res-chart.html) are doing us all an enormous favor.

These tests do reveal a lot. And, after overuse, can reveal one to be obsessive/compulsive and in need of glasses. AND, some of us then feel the need to reproduce (very badly) what these experts have already done. Over and over. And then one comes to the conclusion that nothing looks clear, just more or less clear.

--Seriously though (for a minute), I really do recommend taking a look at this excellent site for one of the easiest to use tools where you can plug in two different lenses, match f/stops and cameras and compare the results. Just don't drive yourself nuts with it:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx

Pause for my kind of clarity with my trusty macro lens.

Hamamelis × intermedia 'Jelena' blooming right now

Now if you want to take this sort of thing further--and who wouldn't?--there's a subset to the Optometrist approach some have called:

Pixel-Peeping. One wants a sharp lens. Yes one does. But it would seem that there's sharp and then there's Sharp. If I'd wanted

Sharp, I should have been willing to spend multiple-times more money on "L" glass--professional grade for full-frame Canon cameras. But mine is not full-frame, and I am far from professional. To peep at pixels then is to compare relative lack of perfections but not to achieve perfection. One throws images up on a computer screen, enlarges a portion of an image until all one sees are pixels or just short of that, and then gazes at relative soft edges.

However, is this how one actually looks at photographs? No. I know this. I don't even print my images, so they remain computer-screen sized which makes most decent shots look like they were chiseled by fairy hands. Ah but I know those pixels are there, lazily spilling out over their borders. It maddens me. And yet I have little choice. Better not to look. Though I do.

And then when I have thoroughly driven myself and my spouse crazy, I turn to the only people left who can stand to work these questions even further into the ground:

Internet Forum Opinions or Seeking Swarm Intelligence: Oh god, this is the worst. Why would I seek the opinions of strangers? And why would their opinions matter unless they owned both lenses? And why would they own both lenses?

Actually, what they hate helps more. Loving a lens just means you haven't found it to get in the way of your photograph. It hasn't frustrated you or ruined a shot for you. Looking at your photos tells me nothing other than your skills or lack thereof as a photographer. I don't really care. But if you tell me that you dislike the soft edges this lens always delivers or that you find the focus ring to be sticky, that tells me something useful.

And yet what I really want is for someone to tell me I'm making the right choice. sigh

I did make a choice and am satisfied with it. So now there's just the drumming of fingers until UPS arrives with my new lens. Just in time for several weeks of rain.

Another macro lens shot while I'm waiting.

Dwarf Maiden Grass

Miscanthus sinensis 'Adagio'

Tangled

2013-11-07T17:36:00.001-08:00

There are lots of spider webs around here. I mean LOTS of them. The delivery woman carries a stick to slash through the tangle strung across the porch so she can bring packages to the front door without having to worry about arachnids crawling through her hair. There's one that's been dangling in front of our kitchen window for months (spider not delivery woman). It occasionally catches a fly and consumes it while I'm stuffing a chicken. And Bailey sometimes trails the remnants of a web as he dashes in to escape what stays caught on his ears and tail. They are everywhere.

And they're beautiful in their delicacy, the way the light breaks across the drops of water caught on the strands and splits into colors, the way strings of those drops drape like ropes of pearls: Nature's Flapper necklace.

But without the moisture, when the filaments double back on themselves, they make the flowers look unkempt, fussing up the smooth petals, contorting the leaves by pulling at the surface, and dulling the colors of the plant until, perhaps, we no longer see the plant at all.

I think this might have been a red-flowering currant (Ribes sanguineum), but now it just looks like the armature for a spider's nervous breakdown, strung with illogical knots and aborted strands headed nowhere.

If I'd never seen this plant before, what would I look at first? Would it be the damage, the web? Would I dismiss the plant and move on to something else? Would I even recognize what it used to be and still was?

Which brings me to a minor health event. While waiting for my sutures to come out this past week, I wondered, "Is this the way I'll see my face: pulled and lined and dulled like a web-twisted plant? The doctor will see the quality of his work; the scar has a beauty for him. He knows what he accomplished, and my face becomes for him another creation, another success.

But I will see how it pinches and slices what was once (relatively) smooth. I imagine how others will stare, caught by the web the scar presents, no longer seeing me as I was.

Before I got my stitches out, it was difficult to see beyond the green/blue Frankenstein sutures. I'm not prone to body art, so accentuating the twisted tissue into a kind of face-painting didn't do too much for me--hell, I don't even have pierced ears. And, believe me, I know the main thing is that the cancer is gone. I know others who have battled (won and lost) far more formidable opponents than mine.

All the same, I was afraid of what I'd see and of ceasing to be who I am in the eyes of others.

And then the stitches came out. I have a scar, a canal arcing down from my left eye and then branching out into two short red streams. It's not at all as bad as I'd feared. And though I notice eyes darting to it, lingering just a moment longer than a heartbeat, they return to my eyes and nothing has changed.

Campanula punctata 'Cherry Bells'

The spiders are still active in the garden. But the flowers that have continued through Autumn don't seem much bothered by them. The Campanula on the right barely tolerates the cobwebs that attempt to anchor themselves to its petals. The color alone almost burns through the lacing.

And the spider silks pulling at the Anemone bud below aren't going to keep it from flowering.

We're Still Here

2013-09-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

I just watched a video of Elaine Stritch singing "I'm Still Here" from Stephen Sondheim's Follies. Even though she spends part of the time forgetting, trying to remember, and then struggling to hear her accompanist singing out the words to the song, she brings down the house (which includes President and Michelle Obama). How much more perfect could it be? Before beginning, Stritch bemoans the fact that she's heard women in their 60s, their 50s, and even one in her 40s doing this number. But, to her mind, you've got to be at least 80-something to really mean it.

So why begin my blog post with this? The song is swimming around in my head now. I usually hate it when I get an earworm, but this is different. It's comforting somehow. First of all, it's Sondheim, and I adore his work. But second, the guts and the promise of the song gives me courage (as well as a few laughs). And--you knew I'd get there eventually--it's so like a garden.

Haven't you had a plant that keeps coming back, year after unlikely year? You try to help it through tender youth, forget to cover it for its first winter, perhaps it stays dormant (perhaps dead) the next year, but then doubles its original size the following year?

It does well; you ignore it in favor of other, newer, showier garden purchases. But it flourishes anyway. Then you notice it's wilting; you over-water it, and now it's turning black. You nearly dig it up before it infects its neighbors but you forget (lots of forgetting in gardening). And it comes back stronger the next year, and you don't remember that it nearly died. It makes it through weather, drought, flood, several presidential administrations, general neglect, and YOU. And it's still here.

There are those spots where someone some time ago thought a plant might look good. She watered it for a season, then tired of the maintenance. Other projects took precedence, maybe someone else bought the property and the plant was part of the package, no more to the new owner than the paint on the walls or the rusting bench. But it survived.

Fresh paint and a pair of Adirondack chairs revive an old house in St. John's, Newfoundland. But those neglected, stunted shrubs look like they're simply hanging on out of a kind of botanical perversity. They don't really "belong" anymore, but they're still there.

I'm a long(ish) ways from 80. But there are times when I feel like this lone, lopsided apple, hanging on towards the end of the season.

Other times, this one-eyed Eastern Screech Owl (I think it's a Screech Owl) reminds me a little too much of how my body can restrict and even fail me. Yet I love how thoroughly pissed off he seems.

But most of the time, I like to imagine that I'm a lot like these beach grasses: tough enough to withstand weather, isolation, neglect, and time, at least while there is still time.

Or the biker.

(The biker is waiting for a ferry, but that's just a tad TOO symbolic, don't you think?)

Watch Elaine Stritch singing "I'm Still Here" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--u0kxITaBU

Other People's Gardens

2013-08-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

Apparently I don't look it, but I'm shy. And big parties can make me especially nervous. So when we were invited to a barbeque where I'd only know two people, I figured having a prop might be a good idea. When people noticed I was hauling (OK, it's not THAT big, but definitely more noticeable than any P & S or iPhone) my Canon 60D, they'd say, "Oh, you've got your camera." And with a smile I'd reply, "Yes I do." Then I'd quickly put it up to my eye and shoot something, anything, and thus I would seem both friendly and occupied. A winning combination. Much better than the Scotch neat I used to carry years ago to get me through a house-full of relative strangers (or strange relatives--but that's a whole different story). And, in my experience, one's hosts appreciate the attention one is paying to their gardening efforts far more than they would the chattering of a formerly quiet but now alarmingly outgoing guest.

However, it turns out there are more advantages than just giving a tongue-tied person something socially acceptable to do. As I've said too many times here before, I'm lousy at landscapes. Yet it appears that when I'm driven to take a wider view of an unfamiliar place, and when that wider view is as beautiful as the one in this particular garden, I'm not as bad as I'd thought.

This is one of those places where you drive several miles along a gently winding road so thickly lined with tall trees that you can't see the properties that might or might not lie just behind them. There are glimpses of the mountains further away, but that's about it. However, once you take the turn off the road and drive the long gravel path to the house, the sky opens up, and you're somewhere else entirely. A beautiful somewhere else.

And while there is a difference between shooting your own flower beds (over and over again) and shooting in an unfamiliar space, there is a special joy in photographing a private garden. Most public grounds have views so consciously created and so identified with the place itself that they're practically labeled "photograph this from here, no, two inches to your right." This is known as "the postcard shot" for its guaranteed, generic beauty at almost any time of year. Nice, but one feels compelled rather than inspired to take the shot.

Private gardens have views too, but usually they've been designed by the people who live there every day, who walk the grounds at all hours, and have no board of directors to please. There is no one, special place to stand, so the views are, in a sense, created each time by the viewer.

I am still a macro photographer at heart, and, even with my walk-around lens, flowers and butterflies on a lovely summer's day are almost impossible to overlook. And, of course, there's the added bonus that a crouching person who's holding her breath as well as a heavy camera is best left alone.

Other people's gardens can inspire the photographer as well as the gardener. And though I'm not at my best photographing people, my lovely friend, Louise, seemed so much a part of the experience of this beautiful view, that I had no trouble taking the shot.

Letting Go of Gardening (for a day)

2013-07-20T15:05:00.002-07:00

Summer is the season for watering, weeding, and wondering what needs to be added, subtracted, or simply altered. It's a time of lists and listlessness (and alliteration). Sometimes it feels like I'm deadheading more than delighting in (no more alliteration, I promise.); I see more spent blooms than I do fresh ones. And weeds. Need I say more?

So I gave myself a day off: No pruners, kneeling pad, bucket or spade. Even carrying a tripod and a heavy, macro lens seemed like too much, too focused (I didn't say there'd be no puns). So armed with only my walk-around lens ( 17-85mm) and sunscreen, I took a stroll in my own garden.

On my way to photograph a giant Common Mullein, two butterflies formed sailors' knots around the Catmint (Nepeta x faassenii 'Walker's Low' ) and Lavatera thuringiaca.

Nepeta x faassenii 'Walker's Low'

Lavatera thuringiaca

It's funny. Often I plant flowers for the birds and butterflies, but I don't often take time to watch them enjoying the garden I planted for them.

Oh yes, I'll look up from my weeding when one flutters by, but the sweat dripping into my eyes makes me turn my head back down to my task.

Today I simply got to watch them garland the garden, vibrating along with the flowers in the breeze.

Verbascum thapsus

After they flew off, I moved on to this year's curiosity. I know, I know, Common Mullein is called that for a reason. But it wasn't common to me. It began as just some fuzzy leaves at the base of a Mexican Feather Grass (Nassella tenuissima). At first I thought it was

Lamb's Ears (Stachys byzantina), but the color was a bit too green.

I left it there for two years to see what would come of it. The first year, it was just a rosette of leaves. But the second year, it shot up with a flower stalk, just shy of eight feet and still growing! For something so common it's pretty darned impressive. I did pull it out though. The Feather Grass is prettier and the mullein is a weed that will spread. But seeing it evolve was worth the time, much better than simply reading about it.

Further on was the new Rockrose (Cistus × dansereaui 'Jenkyn Place' ). Even without a macro lens, I could get close enough and crop tightly enough to really get into the design. There's something so "Southwest" about that red area, like a hand-woven rug or a hand-painted skirt. This was nothing I noticed when I bought it.

I ended the morning with a stubborn Meadow-rue (Thalictrum 'Elin' ). A Douglas Fir branch had blocked some of the sun and all of its growth trajectory, so it bent, swerved, and looped its way up to seven feet, and then (and only then) it flowered in one big AHA! I didn't see the spider web until I uploaded my pictures into Lightroom. There's something magical about Meadow-rue. I always seem to see more once I'm looking at the shots on the computer screen, as if the plant continued to evolve digitally.

My stroll took me all of ten feet into one of the beds (probably about a third of the circumference). I don't know if I learned more about letting go of plans and expectations as a photographer or about letting go of the gardening as a gardener. But both work.

The Significance of the Insignificant Flower: or, GET CLOSER!

2013-06-07T15:20:00.002-07:00

As I've written several times before (see "My Macro Lens and Me"), I photograph with a narrow eye; expansive I am not. Once in awhile I can capture a barn in a field, but large areas of garden overwhelm my brain. Just like crowds and malls and large urban train stations, gardens in bloom distract and then quickly engulf me. I go into full sensory overload. However, unlike crowds and malls and large urban train stations, gardens don't make me shut down or feel the urge to flee. But I also don't feel the urge to pick up my camera. Where to focus when everything is singing (or screaming) to be photographed?

I AM working on this, but, for now, it's back to my macro lens. And what shows that off better than teensy, tiny flowers that look like points of light or nothing at all in a landscape photo?

For instance, Siberian Miner's Lettuce makes a lovely ground cover for part-shade,

but you have to get close to really admire the individual flowers. The common name "Candy Flower" makes more sense now.

Claytonia sibirica

It's true that plants with distinctive foliage like the Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' are often grown just for the attractive green and white leaves alone. And they're pretty cool. . . . I mean, leaves are good. . . . I like leaves. (sound of drumming fingers). . . . . Leaves are important. (more drumming) However, I don't think I'd have bought the plants (I have several) without those tiny, blue flowers in spring.

Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost'

And then there are the plants that offer little more than a boring clump of leaves that grow in the shade. At least the Brunnera is varigated. Take the bland (really bland) Epimedium. For me, they were just some plants that suffered silently in the shade until part-way into summer, they'd shrivel and die. I'd water the dead leaves. And watch them stay pretty much dead except for one or two that would revive. Exciting stuff. I mean the common names are things like "Bishop's Hat" and "Barren Wort." What do you expect? But THIS year was different! Not only are they thriving (yes, they weren't as dead as they looked), but they bloody well flowered! A little.

Epimedium x rubrum

Not the prettiest posies in the world, but there they were, waving around under the (boring) leaves, trying to get my attention. And they did.

Right now, my absolute favorite is the glasses-not-optional flowers of the 'Purple Fantasy' Fleeceflower:

Yes, the Polygonum microcephalum (Persicaria microcephala synonym) does have cool leaves and a kind of odd-ball shape filled with kinks and unexpected patterns. But the teensy, tiny flowers just blew me away. You REALLY need a macro lens and some cropping to get a close look. But it's worth it.

What are your favorite "insignificant" flowers?

Meditations on White

2013-05-19T13:29:00.000-07:00

A long, long time ago, in a city far, far away, my photographs were never in color. It wasn't only that black and white film was a lot less complicated to develop and print; I just didn't much care for color. (I also spent a lot of time going to Ingmar Bergman films by myself, if that helps). And I had very little interest in gardens, although I lived in a climate of four-season flowers.

Now I live where growing time is limited and color is precious. So white flowers don't really do that much for me. Yes, they light up dark areas in a garden and do a good job of attracting pollinators in forests. But there's something too cold, even forbidding about them.

Azaleas

White in western culture brings to mind purity, innocence, even a clean-slate. Brides, babies, and new beginnings. But most East and South-Asian cultures wear white to funerals. And in "The Whiteness of the Whale" chapter from Moby Dick, Herman Melville writes of the fear induced by the paleness of the dead, the white shroud, the ghost that arises. Then there's the horror experienced when confronted by the abyss that is no color and all colors. When staring up at the star-filled night sky, Ishmael wonders if the indefiniteness of whiteness "shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?"

carrot flowers

(Daucus carota subsp. sativus)

And there's just something sort of creepy about white flowers. The flowers on the left that bloomed from carrots I never dug up have that "bride of death," horror film feel to them.

The sweet-smelling yet highly toxic Lily of the Valley below is often used for bridal bouquets. Seems like an odd or at least an ironic choice.

Convallaria majalis

Maybe my aversion is more about the idea of purity and innocence.

Actual innocence is a kind of blankness, a lack of experience. Do we exalt that state because it is valuable or because we mourn our spotted lives, our lives cluttered with good and bad, right and wrong. We long for a chance to begin again, to try for perfection by consciously returning to a state of perfection. But it doesn't work that way.

Life is messy. We all do terrible things. And we must live with that. What could be more poignant, what could be more human? This is not to say we should celebrate our mistakes. We celebrate that we live with them. And every experience, every spot and every tear, adds to that life. And, for me, a touch of color adds to, even redeems, the whiteness of a flower.

Starflower (Trientalis borealis)

The Fine Art of Botanical Self-Defense: Spines

2013-05-05T15:56:00.000-07:00

So you think spring is the time of soft, green grass; brightly, colored flowers; and sweet smells. And it is. But don't be fooled. That innocent-looking garden is armed and (somewhat) dangerous. Welcome to the world of thorns, spines, and prickles.

First, a quickie lesson and/or review.

Roses don't have thorns--though many poets would have it so.

Roses have prickles. They can--with the right gloves--be scraped off. Thorns and spines, not so much.

The sharp plant bits that snag our clothes, puncture our gloveless fingers, and surprise unwanted guests are defined by their tissues rather than the pain they produce.

Thorns are modified branches: think hawthorne trees and flowering quince

Spines are modified leaves: think cacti and holly

Prickles are modified bark or skin (sort of), basically epidermal tissue: think roses

The spines in my garden come in two varieties: ones that appear at the leaf margins and ones erupting from the branches.

Some California Lilacs (Ceanothus spp.) have small holly-like leaves. And for most of the year, they're really all you see. But when the flowers begin to bloom, I often lose sight of the rest of the plant, and want to lean in for a better look

Ceanothus gloriosus ' Pt. Reyes'

But they are so small and the flowers are so very small, that you're practically nose-to-nose with them before you realize how close you're coming to some less than friendly spines.

Barberry (Berberis spp.) was one of the first new plants I encountered when we moved up here. I loved the textures and the colors; it seemed both fierce and graceful and now I have four of them.

The darwinii has these amazingly orange flowers, and, like the Ceanothus above, it has small, spiny leaves.

Berberis darwinii

Berberis thunbergii 'Rosy Glow'

On the other hand, the lovely 'Rosy Glow' has smooth, soft leaves. But the spines hide underneath them.

These spines do more than frustrate the tactile gardener; they protect the plant from actual predators. Neither large animals nor small insects (with relatively large mouths) like munching or even walking through "armed" (truly, the technical term) plants. Which is probably why these particular shrubs make charming hedges for those whose neighbors are less than congenial.

Brain Mumbles

2013-04-19T12:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the rain, but my brain will not latch onto anything, not any one thing. What's a term for being tongue-tied with writing and/or photography? It feels like trying to say "goat snouts mouths" over and over quickly.

Go ahead and try it.

That's what my brain feels like.

So the solution is to post nothing? Though I'm more likely to shoot off a "roll" of blah photos than I am to scribble random thoughts, I'm reluctant to post them. So I just park myself in a corner and sulk.

It's been a year, yet I'm still a total beginner at this blogging thing. My dear friend (and fabulous blogger) Dee Dee recently reminded me that not every post needs to be "perfect." Not every image needs a reason beyond my liking it.


I like this image

And not every word needs to be anything more than mine.

Maybe I just need to air out my thoughts--once the rain stops--take a deep breath . . . and admire some plant hairs.

I like this image too

Un-Still Photography and Refocusing the Photographer

2013-03-22T14:10:00.000-07:00

My husband is a painter, and recently his mentor gave the following assignment to their group: If I asked you to break one rule you have for yourself regarding watercolor painting, what would it be? It might be a rule from traditional approaches and techniques or one you've set for yourself...

I thought this was a brilliant assignment! Too many times rules (technical, aesthetic, etc.) keep us from discovery.

But it's not that simple. Like driving, I learned social customs late. Stick close to the rules and no one will realize you've lived way (way) outside them for much of your life. And conformity has its uses and even benefits. At a four-way stop, we agree that the first person there gets to proceed first (though we are foolish if we don't check to make sure we're all on the same page about that). In my old world, there were no four-way stops, no roads of any kind. Every step was like a pebble tossed in a lake, rippling the surface in all directions, in no direction. So I learned to like roads, stopsigns, and rules. However, rules can become walls just as the lack of them can become chaos. And I became a person on a ledge, hugging the walls for safety from the abyss. But between the wall and the abyss is something else. A universe.

I love Dale Chihuly. I love his work, but, even more, I love his freedom. Watch any video, watch every video of him and you'll see it. If anyone makes art look like fun and fun look like life beyond (not without) rules, it's him. From his baskets to his gardens, from his ceilings to his forests, there is a kind of confident abandon, there is pure joy.

We'd waited for a sunny day to drive down to Seattle to see "Chihuly Garden and Glass" at the Seattle Center. Photography was allowed but tripods were not.

I had no desire to use one anyway. Why would I take pictures of these beautiful pieces when excellent reproductions are available in just about every format? Granted, I have taken pictures of plants purely for botanical reproductions. They need to be accurate. They need to show the plants in all their forms. Leaves must show up clearly and buds and fruit as well as flowers need to be recorded. But I don't do much of this anymore.


"Glass Forest" as still as I could hold it

So there I was, enjoying the exhibits. I had my camera, but not enough light for well-focused, hand-held shooting. So I started moving the camera in ways that reflected what I was getting from the pieces: sweeping it, jiggling, even jumping it. Keeping the camera absolutely still is a cardinal rule, particularly for botanical photography. Tripods, mirror lock-up, and cable releases are de rigueur.

So moving the camera around while pressing the shutter felt pretty freeing! I did get some odd looks. Did I KNOW I wasn't holding still? Did I REALISE moving around was a bad thing with a "still camera"? Yup. Not having to brace myself, hold my breath and gently squeeze the shutter was enough to make a person giddy. And giddy is exactly what a lot of Chihuly's work makes me feel.

Breaking the rules. I've got a "still" camera. Which means I shoot stills as opposed to moving pictures. But does that necessarily mean I have to be still? Light "rules" in photography. You change your settings (if you can't change the lighting), or you can change your expectations.

I found that shots that were just a little out of focus hurt my eyes. I guess the eye muscles were trying hard to get the image into focus or at least to hold still. But once an image was clearly (pun certainly intended) taken while moving, then my eyes accepted the result and relaxed. And once they relaxed, they could register the view from the merry-go-round that had, a moment before, been a slightly soft-focused chandelier.

Inside the "Glasshouse," light improved and so did my shutter speed. The umbrella-like forms seem to follow the people as they walk through on their way to the gardens. Gorgeous and expected.

But then I changed my angle and looked up. And the umbrellas had changed to an abstraction of swirling butterflies, garlanding the Space Needle. I tried in Lightroom to get the lines "right" and correct the distortions. Then realized the image was my experience. The photograph expressed the ride I was on between the wall and space.

The Quirks of a Winter's Day

2013-03-08T11:09:00.003-08:00

It's dark. 10:23 in the morning, and it's dark. Well, grey. And raining. Evergreens green

in the backyard forest. And last-year's stalks and stems brown in the beds. Yes, one resorts to verbing (converting nouns and adjectives into verbs) when so little activity can be observed in the garden.

It's March, it's still winter. So why oh why are there primroses?

The first time I ever saw primroses, they were displayed outside a big box "garden center" (hardly a center and certainly not a garden, but that's for another time). I thought they were fake. Even after squeezing the leaves and rubbing the petals between my fingers, I still wasn't certain they weren't another Monsanto product. And even after finding out FOR SURE that they were nature rather than HomeDepot made, I didn't feel the need to add them to my garden. However, this time, in this much grey (and green and brown) I just couldn't resist this blue striped wonder.

And then, once I picked it up and carried it around with me, it seemed I'd crossed some horticultural border and gone over to the other side. I photographed it (and its orange and red sisters purchased in some sort of colorized fever), but couldn't get the shots right.

Perhaps something about them must have made me wince just as I squeezed the shutter. The depth-of-field, the focus was never what I wanted.

Maybe my eyes aren't yet ready for full-on summer color?

So what's actually growing and blooming right this minute in my garden? Hellebores, for a start. Yes, I know that these two colors (the primroses to the left and the Hellebore below) clash horribly, but I'm making a point here. Maybe my winterized eyes need to be eased into the very idea of color.

And, what is more, many of these flowers with the muted hues of February and March face downwards.

Seems odd at first. Shouldn't flowers open up for our eyes? Isn't that why we plant flowers (rather than "plants")? Some growers are even breeding Hellebores that face out and/or up to satisfy frustrated gardeners who have to contort themselves to see their flowers' "faces." At least Beverley Nichols had a more reasonable solution. At a recent talk by Marianne Binetti, I learned that he walked about his garden with a mirror attached to a comfortable length of pipe. So if one must see inside a downward-facing flower, one could do so without disturbing the flower or oneself. But what's wrong with mirrorlessly admiring what they do show?

Bell-shaped flowers like the Pieris below would lose the beauty of their form and the color supplied by their peduncles and sepals if they hung any other way. And apparently the double-flowered Hellebores on the left still resist attempts to genetically flip them upwards. At their current angle, the multiple petals (sepals, actually) seem to float and flutter even on the (rare) windless day. Fine by me.

I haven't planted the store-bought primroses yet. Can't quite bring myself to do it in the grey light. Maybe during one of our sun-breaks, they will seem less inappropriate, and I'll get them in the ground before they entirely stop blooming. Until them, I'll enjoy my downward-facing Snowdrops.

Walking on Water

2013-01-21T17:59:00.000-08:00

So I wanted to try for a real blogging schedule. Like maybe every two weeks. Other people do it. It may be too much too often for some of my readers, but I'm curious to see what happens when I don't just write when I feel like it or work on photos when I'm in the mood.

And, of course, it's winter. A FABULOUS time to do garden photography in the Northwest. Yeah, right. Green and grey and brown. A color palette to swoon over. Don't get me wrong--at least not too wrong--I love the seasons up here. All of them. But it's late(r) January, and I'm pretty much done with winter. Unfortunately, it's not done with me.

I'm just looking for a little magic now. OK? Leaves draped in diamonds. A hillside swathed in fog that's being slowly diluted with a weak, winter sun. However I seem to have forgotten how to take photographs. And not just any type of photograph, but MACRO photographs! Every shot I take comes up soft (blurry), muddy (bleh light), and/or just plain boring. And getting a sharp photo of ice crystals seems totally beyond my vanishing skill set. Come on! Is it really that difficult? Is the heat of my enthusiasm/frustration melting the ice, thus making sharpness moot (mute?). Have I completely lost my macro-mojo or just misplaced it? Crap

Then one morning a few days ago, I saw a blue heron standing on the pond. Yes, standing ON the mostly-frozen pond. At first I thought it would take too much time to change from my macro to my 75-300mm lens and change clothes. But I really wanted, needed to be closer to that heron walking on water. I changed lenses, left the tripod, threw a coat over my nightgown, and raced outside. Then spent a wonderful if very chilly 45 minutes inching my way closer and closer, snapping shots all the way and trying to keep from shaking the camera with my shudders. At that I was still selective and took about 96 shots. None are "tack sharp" and I don't care. The heron even looked me in the eye (at least it appeared that he/she did from the distance) and didn't leave. Not until I turned back to get my very blue self back indoors. Then it vanished.

The second gift I received (because that lovely bird was a serious gift) came in a wonderful blog entry by nature photographer Rob Sheppard titled "Savoring vs. Harvesting Nature Photography." He wrote about how photographers can go through periods where filling a memory card and rushing back to the computer for post-processing can become more important than savoring the experience of nature. Slow down and fill yourself with those moments BEFORE taking the picture.

I began taking pictures because I wanted to be closer to what I was seeing. If I found myself staring at something for longer than a few minutes--a flower, tree bark, light breaking apart on ice--then I knew I needed to photograph it. But when time pressures and technical issues push these moments aside, the resulting images (as well as my own experiences) suffer.

So I went back to my ice photos and found a few that looked better to me. The images are far from ideal, but there were leaves draped in icy diamonds that day. I just didn't see them until I spent some time with a blue heron taking a stroll across a frozen pond.

By the way, if you'd like to take a look at Rob Sheppard's blog, it's Nature and Photography http://www.natureandphotography.com/

Winter Cures: Bones, Berries, and Post-Processing

2013-01-05T14:58:00.000-08:00

It was two days before Christmas, when I started trying to write this blog post, and no snow in sight. Like this old barn, the world outside my window looked cold, beaten, plain, and stubborn.

Without snow or even sub-freezing temperatures, the plants were confused. Well, they're hardly confused. They just react to what is, and what IS--still--is a very grey autumn in winter: lots of empty branches but a defiant few with dead yet clinging leaves. I could go on about how they are like an elderly grande dame, clinging to her faded youth with too much makeup and an inappropriate décolletage, but I won't.

This spirea would be perfect for autumn but right now just seems to be trying too hard.

At least these Caryopteris seed heads have the right idea: browns (crispy browns) after Thanksgiving are de rigueur.

I've been looking at how others approach their gardens in winter, how they use the mostly leafless landscape to reveal the "bones" of the garden: the basic shapes and structures hidden for most of the year by the leaves and flowers and even fruit we buy plants for. And yet I must admit I don't have the stomach for photographing my garden's anatomy.

It seems intrusive: naked and asleep, who would welcome a prying camera? And, yes, bones reveal the garden's internal architecture, but x-rays are really only interesting to radiologists and then only if something is very very wrong. And even when I repressed my natural disinclination, my shots of bare branches looked like shots of bare branches. Nothing revealing or even titillating. Just chaotic lines crisscrossing my (almost) monochromatic beds.

However, fruited branches are another matter, and, with Beautyberry (Callicarpa ssp), the fruit is probably one of the only reasons to photograph (or grow) the plant. Nothing like a little neon purple to wake up the color sensors.

And add water droplet and you've got another dimension.

But it's raining (again), so it's time to settle in for some post-processing. My distractions of choice are Lightroom 4 dot whatever and Photoshop Elements 10. By the way, no one, and I mean NO ONE, is better at teaching Lightroom than Laura Shoe. I keep her DVDs by my computer because they are they best resource I've found. A link to her website can be found on the left under the list of "Blogs I Follow." PSE is something I'm always in the process of learning, but, as yet, I am still guru-less on that front.

Now please understand, I'm not into putting rose heads on sunflower plants or cat-heads on dogs. But most photographs (at least, most of my photographs) need a little tweaking, particularly if you shoot in raw mode. But it's winter, and sometimes you just have to turn things upside-down just to shake loose the ideas.

So I'll end with a dull view of our pond and its anchored raft on a dull winter's day.

And if you invert it you get something out of Dr. Who

All I did was crop and flip and diddle with the color and lighting. Nothing added.

Sometimes you've just got to amuse yourself when your garden won't cooperate.

Lipstick Latin Pars Duo: What's In a Name?

2012-10-28T13:26:00.000-07:00

“Lipstick Latin” appears to be the most viewed post on my blog. So I guess it's time for another dip into taxonomy and botanical Latin.

As explained in that prior entry, my adventures in Latin were based on academic insecurity and intellectual romanticism: I believed that smart, credentialed people knew Latin. Therefore, a light application of Catullus or Livy might make me at least appear fit for Academia. In addition, since I had rather pronounced stage-fright when it came to speaking a foreign language in a classroom, Classical Latin, not truly “spoken” for about twelve or thirteen hundred years, seemed ideal: reading and translating, not conversing. Neither Caesar nor Ovid required one to say “Where is the bus station?” or “Those yellow shoes are too expensive.” Perfect! However there was one teacher in the Classics Department who insisted that Latin, while linguistically static, was alive in the hills and in her classroom. And one day when our much more traditional professor was off at a conference, she appeared. Poor woman; she greeted us in Latin, and we just sat there. She asked us questions (in Latin) and we just stared at her. She even tried to get us to sing with her (in, God help us, Latin) and we sat, stared, and rolled our eyes. After about 15 minutes of this, she gave up the fight and returned to Caesar's wars.

So, no conversation, no worries about correct pronunciation—no one really knows how it sounded since no one speaks (or sings) it any more. Admittedly, there are some straight-forward rules from Classical Latin, but they are not always followed. So when attempting to speak the scientific names of plants, William T. Stearn, eminent botanist and author of, wait for it, Botanical Latin, maintained that “How they are pronounced really matters little provided they sound pleasant and are understandable by all concerned.” Hi Five, my man!

But why Latin for plants? So-called “Common Names” are easier to remember (and say). And they're so much more colorful. I mean, who wouldn't rather ask for “Pussytoes” than Antennaria neglecta?

Now I could get all academic on you and be thorough and very, very long. But this is a blog, and I'm not a taxonomist (though I do like the word).

Although common names might seem, well, friendlier, they're not always reliable. For example, if I refer to the lily I'm growing outside my kitchen window, you might get a kind of generalized mental picture, but you are also likely to be wrong. There are over FIFTY genera (plural of “genus”) of plants whose common name contains the word “lily.”

Hellebore (Helleborus spp.)

Then there are rather inexact variations on established common names using the modifier “False” like False Lily-of-the-Valley, False Solomon's Seal, False Spirea, False Hellebore, etc. Sort of like identifying someone as “Not Murray.”

False Hellebore (Veratrum viride)

So ask me again: why Latin for plants? Short answer: one dead (i.e. unchanging) language + one name = we all know which plant we're talking about.

Thanks to Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), scientific plant names are Latin or Latinized and binomial (consisting of two parts). The first part indicates the genus and the second is the specific epithet or species epithet. Together they form the species name. In written form, they are both italicized, but only the genus begins with a capital letter. When using the genus without a species epithet, the genus can be followed with unitalicized sp. or ssp. for single or multiple unnamed species.

The names themselves can be useful, but not consistently.

Some indicate physical characteristics: alba=white, sanguineum=blood-red, hirsuta=hairy, campanula=small bell (referring to the flower shape), foetida=having a bad smell. But there are other name-sources.


Ribes sanguineum

Geographical place-names or habitats: japonica=from Japan, chinensis=from China, alpina=from the alps, sylvestris=of the woods.

Latinized names of people, real or fictional: Abelia spp. for Dr. Clarke Abel, (1780-1826) British naturalist; Forsythia spp. for William Forsyth, (1737-1804) Scottish horticulturist; Hyacinthus from Greek mythology: the youth loved by Apollo. In one version, the West Wind god, Zephyrus, caused his death out of jealousy, and Apollo created the flower from his spilled blood.

Hypericum Androsaemum 'Albury Purple'

But then there are names like Hypericum which is thought to be derived from the Greek hyper for "above" or "over" and eikon for "image" or "apparition." It may have been used to ward off evil spirits or possibly hung above pictures or religious icons for protection. Though not too helpful in terms of matching Latin name to physical plant, it is interesting from a medicinal point of view. For centuries, Hypericum perforatum (St. John's Wort) has been used to treat a variety of ills. Currently it is prescribed widely in Europe to treat depression, an evil spirit if there ever was one.

Learning the scientific names of plants is enormously useful as well as occasionally entertaining. And it's a whole lot more fun than translating sections of Caesar's Commentaries. But I admit I still get a kick out of asking for "pussytoes."