Make cards with the images of your favorite blooms to add a personal touch to gifts and greetings.

Your garden in pictures

Raspberry-sherbet clusters of coneflowers and cantaloupe-gold billows of daylilies bow to the last of the gentle rain. When the final drop has left the clouds, I sally forth with tripod, a 100 mm close-up lens, a digital camera and flash.

Each flower in my garden has its own beauty. There are the dazzlers and seducers, whisperers and shouters. They are short and tall, plain and fancy, indigenous and exotic. Each has its own pattern, color and form, and I want to capture them all to savor again after their petals have fallen and stems have withered.

A foliage photo safari

I know the rules. I place my back to the sun, whose light is filtered through a thin layer of gray clouds and shoot, shoot, shoot. Morning light is good; evening light is often better; but flat, gray skies are the best. No shadows, no glare.

The digital camera’s viewer doesn’t serve up any “blinkies,” or bright “hot spots.” Just flat light that allows me to close down the lens aperture to 32 or 36 and let the light dribble in.

I move from coneflower to black-eyed Susan to blazing star, then up the tall garden phlox. Often I am distracted and go off chasing butterflies or hummingbird moths or capture a clandestine affair between two beetles that let a chance meeting on a coreopsis get out of hand.

Then I’m back. Tripod steady, I focus until the little dot inside the camera says all is well, then slowly squeeze the “trigger.” A ratcheting of the shutter inside the camera says I’ve preserved a moment of my garden in time. Then I slightly alter the settings — shutter slower, faster; aperture more open, more closed.

Get great garden photos with your camera

Go beyond “Automatic.” Experiment with other settings. Most pocket digitals have a symbol, often a flower, on the dial or in the program menu, which sets the camera for taking close-ups. This setting blurs the background, giving the image a narrow depth of field, so the subject stands out.

Finding and making light. The “magic hour” for photography is when the sun is low. Morning gives truer colors; evening light yields warmer hues. Avoid high noon. Midday sunshine is too bright and casts harsh shadows. A slight overcast gives even lighting. No clouds? Make them yourself with a white umbrella or thin white material. For flowers in deep shade, use the camera flash or bounce light in with a sheet of white cardboard.

Try new positions and angles. Turn the camera from horizontal to vertical. Bend over and shoot straight down onto the flowers. Bend your legs, kneel or lie down to get on the flower’s level or below. Shoot upward to silhouette blooms dramatically against dark tree leaves or an uncluttered blue sky. Photograph a wide-angle view of the whole garden, then explore the details of single blossoms.
Cheat a little. Hasn’t rained lately? Use a spray bottle to sprinkle droplets of water onto the petals for a sparkling, fresh-after-a-storm look.

Want eye-popping color? Find the camera menu option that lets you increase color saturation. Can’t get any closer? Use the lens zoom feature to bring the bloom to you.

Capture the season

Garden photography is like picking a different bouquet each day. My husband and I have worked many hours to create a myriad of living flower arrangements in our backyard. We’ve dug holes, planted and watered. We’ve pushed wheelbarrows of topsoil, fertilizer and mulch in, and loads of weeds out. Now, we get to shoot photos as our reward — starting with the welcome blossoms of snowdrops in late February, through spring’s irises and columbines, into the summer season of almost-too-plentiful color, then on through the last fading aster and mum.

Garden a go-go

What will we use the thousands of photos for? We share the daily bouquet with friends through a slideshow on the computer screen. E-mail a few favorite flowers each day or collect a bouquet on CD to be viewed on a TV or used as a computer screen saver.

Have your garden indoors in any room, at any time of year, by displaying images on digital photo frames. Or personalize your home décor with prints of your best blooms.

For the project-minded, a host of software can guide you through making calendars, cards and posters featuring your garden blooms, adding a personal touch to gifts and greetings.

Planning ahead

Photographs also can be a gardener’s tool to help plan spring moves: add more yellow against the gray stone wall or showcase the purples by surrounding them with more pinks. Planning next year’s garden is a great winter activity when snow is piled against the windowpanes and the north wind tears through the countryside.
You can even create a digital catalog of what your garden contained each year.

Get started now

Photo equipment can start as basic and inexpensive as a disposable camera or lower-end point-and-shoot digitals, plus a trip to the drug store photo department to copy your images to CD or DVD or to have the best printed.

Another option for a beginner on a budget is to invest in quality, guaranteed used equipment. Check for advertisements in photography magazines, search the Web or ask around at your local camera shop.
Cheaper equipment probably won’t produce the same high-quality images as professionals, but it should work just fine for personal use.

Garden photography is for anyone who wishes to gather huge armloads of their prized flowers and plants, store them inside to enjoy all year round or spread them among friends and relatives. There’s no better way to warm your spirit during the throes of winter than by sipping hot chocolate in front of a virtual bouquet of spring bounty. — Linda Steiner