The Spring Garden
Meditations on Light and Color

A spring garden is one of the tools in my box to fix whatever isn't quite right in my life. A negative mood might come into the garden with me but after some meditation with nature, it gets replaced pretty quickly with feelings of peace and happiness.

Nature photographers are among the luckiest of people. They are different than the average person... keen observers of their environment, they don't miss a detail! Great photographers stamp the spirit that "lives" in each moment and place into their photographs.

And one of the most spiritual places on earth is a garden. Spend quiet time there and let the energy descend on you and osmose into your being... shoot your photographs while you're in that feeling. It will show up in your pictures.

The Quarry Garden in Queen Elizabeth Park, early June. Days are longer, the light is softer than mid summer but it can still be strong. You might consider a polarizing filter to reduce glare, slow down your shutter speed a bit or to add a depth and richness to the spring colors.

Here's the perfect color combination - rich orange tulips and blue forget-me-nots. If you look on the color wheel, orange-red, blue-violet and yellow-green are triad colors and they go great together! Mother Nature never makes a color faux-pas.

Its mid afternoon and the sun is high and quite strong. There were deep shadows. So I used a polarizing lens to cut the glare and enrich the spring colors.

The sun is shining from behind and through the flowers so the petals in this spring garden appear translucent. And the sun was shining quite high in the sky at the time so the camera had to be lower than the tulip blooms.

This is one of those shots where you have to sprawl flat on the grass. Always a good idea to wear comfortable clothing! Change your perspective. Take shots from different angles... above, below, from the side, front and back.

Rich, warm evening sunshine falling on a spring garden. The light is striking this garden at a low angle. Because of the angle, early morning or evening light produces much less contrast than mid-day light. As well, the light is warm and yellow or golden... the warm side of the light spectrum.

This sidelight accentuates the details of the leaves on the bush and gives perspective to this spring garden scene.

I'm sure you've experienced this. I sure have! My eyes are sensitive to light and I wear sunglasses much of the time. Early morning and evening are comfortable without but in a strong mid-day sun, its sometimes difficult to even open my eyes!

If you take a garden picture in the middle of the day, you'll see a cool blue tone to the light... that's because the sun is shining straight down at nearly a right angle. Ultra-violet and blue spectrum rays are reflected and they show up in your picture.

You can make adjustments to your camera's white balance to fix that. If you shoot RAW, color balance isn't a big deal in camera. You can change that in Adobe RAW or your photo editing software. But, JPG isn't "fixable" like RAW, so get your manual and set your white balance every time you go out to shoot.

This photograph was taken on an overcast day! A different lighting situation. A lightly cloudy day is the best for shooting photography!

Contrast is reduced... no deep, dark shadows with no detail. Just a black blob. Or brilliant skies that convert to dull, annoying white spaces! What could have been black shadow here... the trees... has excellent detail.

There's also detail in the white flowers and the bright yellow daffodils. Compare the details of the trees in this photo with the shadow of the trees in the first photograph. See the difference?

You should be checking the histogram on your camera after each photo you take. Your histogram will tell you if you've lost detail in the highlights or the shadows. You may have to make adjustments to your exposure and take another shot to get all the details you need.

On a sunny day, you're going to have to choose what you're going to sacrifice, highlight or shadow detail. Choose which is more important to the picture.

Another tool... turn on the blinking highlights on your camera and if there are flashing spots on your photo, that's where you've totally lost detail. No blinking highlights? Congratulations -- you've captured all the detail you possibly can.

Blinking highlights and your histogram are tools you should be using all the time to get a better quality garden picture. Make them your friends... read up on how to use them in your camera manual!

In England, daffodils are sometimes called jonquils. Daffodils, narcissus or jonquils... they symbolize new beginnings. The quintessential spring flowers!

This group of daffodils entertained me for an hour. I worked them from every possible angle!

The first garden picture -- the yellow and orange daffodils stand out nicely against the darker brown tree trunk. Nice contrast.

And that great color combination of yellow-orange, green and blue-violet once again.

The sun is shining but there aren't any black shadows with no detail. A long shadow in the background gives away the fact that it was either morning or evening... it was early evening.

The petals were nearly glowing in the warm sun and I wanted to catch that in my photos. A nice bonus... the daffodil bed is raised. A perfect set-up to get under the flowers.

The ground was rain soaked and it was like a big sponge. I forgot a plastic sheet so my jeans soaked up the water. A lot uncomfortable! Next time I'll come better prepared after a rainy day.

Shooting the flowers from this angle, again on the grass, the yellow flowers are in front of the pink cherry blossoms. The pink still provides contrast and the daffodils stand out against them. The yellow leaves in the bush complement the yellow in the petals. Its a softer picture than the first.

The background here is blurred. If you look at the first photo, most of it is in focus since I wanted to show the texture of the tree trunk and the detail of the blue-violet flowers.

Are you starting to see that each picture has a totally different look? Same patch of daffodils but up against different backgrounds. It pays to really work your angles!

I've caught the cherry blossoms on the left here but most of the background is a fiery red-leaf bush. The long lens compresses the background and makes it look much closer than it really is.

Different colors -- different feel.

There's backlight on the yellow petals. Backlight is great and I use it for garden photos as much as possible. It emphasizes the softness of the petals and brings out lots of fine detail.

If you're shooting directly into the sun when you do this, you have to shade your lens so you don't get flare in your spring garden picture. You might have a lens shade that comes with a new lens, or you might have to use your hand. But, make sure your hand isn't in your photo!

The last of the four photos... we're down to orange-yellow and green as the prominent colors. The deep green leaves and the brown branches are the darker elements in this garden picture.

The daffodils tend to blend in with the background so this spring garden photo isn't as effective as the other three. Its softer. If the stems in the bush weren't there, it would be hard to separate the daffodils from the yellow leaves.

In all four photos there are some good angles... the daffodils lean into the picture. The flowers and stems create a nice curve. In this last picture, the branches form a repeating pattern. So do the stems in all the photos.

Critique a Spring Garden Picture

Horizontal and vertical lines in the fence and the s-curve of the path are composition tools that make an interesting picture.

The fence is in the top third just like the Rule of Thirds suggests. And the curve of the path changes on the lower third.

Everything is in focus because all the elements are important.

There are long shadows so what time of day do you think it is?

And, last but not least, lots of color in this spring garden picture!

We're in the Children's Garden at one of my favorite places - VanDusen Botanical Garden, right beside the Shaughnessy Restaurant. For more of VanDusen's, take a look here.

We're on an Asian island now, at Yeomiji Botanical Garden, south of South Korea. And this is the hydrangea walk.

The hydrangeas are spectacular colors and in the humidity, just after a rain, the colors were incredibly rich.

It was monsoon, early June and there was a thick cloud cover. There was usually a heavy fog except in the afternoon. And fog is fun to shoot in.

The light is even since there's not much sunlight getting through the cloud cover. Didn't have to worry about blown highlights or blocked shadows. Still, I always check my histogram.

The trees make a nice frame for the hydrangeas and the dark tree trunks provide contrast. They also add a curvy note!

The top of the hydrangeas create a circular shape across the picture... a curve is always interesting.

If you want to visit Yeomiji Botanical Garden some more, its right here.

To wrap up our critique, the final spring garden photo is Yeomiji Botanical Garden again.

Jeju Island was formed from volcanic action. Yeomiji has incorporated the ubiquitous black basalt rocks into their perennial garden. These formations add a lot of extra detail.

There's a tall rock formation on the left side and several along the perennial border. Not a rock garden but they fit in well.

Rather than shoot this spring garden from the front, I turned to shoot it from an angle. Its much more interesting than looking at it straight on.

This was taken on the same day as the last photo, lots of cloud and intermittent rain. The greens are healthy and vibrant. There's no extreme light. Just soft and even.

There is lots of detail in the trees at the back which would be black if the sun were shining brightly.

Now you've had a chance to critique my spring garden pictures, you should get into the habit of doing the same with your own.

And when you see any photograph you like, ask yourself why you like it? Keep your answers in mind when you shoot your own photos in a spring garden.

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