Garden, Pt 1

I recently went on a camping trip, and the pictures are going to take a while to sort through and write about. But in the meantime, I can break the silence by posting a few pictures I've taken recently in our garden at home.

Garden photography has some obvious advantages - dependably big, showy subjects that are easily and quickly accessible. It has some challenges, too. One is tripod coverage, because most garden subjects will be low to the ground.

But the biggest challenge, in my experience, is background management. While background management is certainly not always easy in the wild, there are a few variables on the side of the photographer. A good background is more likely to present itself - a carpet of moss, a tree or grove of trees, flowers, a stream, a mountain, a view, a picturesque boulder...the list goes on. In a garden, fences, dirt, walls, and other such elements are often nearby and, in a closeup shot, can create an unattractive and distracting background.. You will see that I have not completely satisfied with my efforts to meet this challenge - two out of three pictures have backgrounds that I find distracting. I thought it would be useful, though, to post them and talk about their positive and negative aspects.

The first picture, of Lenten roses, comes from March. I wanted to "frame" the flower in the foreground with the blooms you see above and behind it. They don't stand out as well as I had envisioned, though, and the whole image looks a bit cluttered. This even with the wide aperture of f/3.2. Still, I achieved good detail on the foreground flower.

The second, of bleeding hearts, is more recent. The background consists of the plant's leaves and the ground. I am not fully satisfied with the background in the picture, as it's a bit cluttered. The flowers are striking, though, and I like the way I arranged them, with one of the middle ones in focus. That decision, I think, adds depth and interest to the image.

Finally, another picture in which I was able to use multiple flowers of the same kind as a background. The plant was thick enough that I was able to do so without incorporating any distracting elements such as a wall, dirt, or anything else. I tried several different focus points on the flower, and this was the most pleasing. I stopped down to f/6.3 to increase the amount of the foreground flower that was in focus. In hindsight, I wish I had experimented with a slightly wider aperture to see if I could blur the background a bit more without losing too much foreground detail. Ultimately, though, f/6.3 produced an acceptable result, I think.