Category Archives: Garden Photography

Land Girls


During the  autumn of 2010 I started photographing a few people I knew for a personal project, initially inspired by a Land Girls poster from WW2. Like the Gardeners’ Hands project from a couple of years ago, it gathered momentum, slowly at first, but by word of mouth it has grown from the original six portraits taken last year, to a surprising 30 portraits. And I only seem to have scratched the surface! Not a literal interpretation of the original poster, the connection with everyone is that they grow edible plants or plants for cropping in some form – whether in a […]

RPS photography course at Mill Dene Gardens


After the success of the flower photography course Jason Ingram and I ran last May with the Royal Photographic Society, the follow up was held last weekend. This time it was for two days,  with detailed assessments and plenty of time for practical experience in the beautiful gardens at Mill Dene, in the Cotswolds. Again we had a full house with 10 students who all appeared to enjoy themselves, despite the fact that at 6am the expected beautiful morning light was, in fact, rain! Plan B came into play and a daylight studio session was held instead. Our next planned course will […]

Garden Photographer of the Year competition 2011


This year I have been lucky enough to have a single image selected in the final of the IGPOTY competition and have a portfolio commended. The exhibition will be on show at Kew Gardens from May 14th. The single image is a portrait of a gardening team in the WW1 cemetery at Le Trou Aide Poste, near Lille, Northern France. This photograph is based on an image, taken around 1920, of a team of War Graves Commission gardeners. It is part of a story on the Fromelles Cemetery near Lille, opened in 2010 for the reburial of British and Australian WW1 […]

An alternate view


These are experimental shots I’ve taken over the last few days, and are tests for a project I’m currently researching. They happen to be taken in my back garden. As I haven’t done any gardening since mid-summer, most things appear to be dead – even the things you would expect to be alive. I suppose this style of gardening is best described as non-interventionist – but it leads to some great photographic opportunities!

Kew Gardens, 18th February


A few test shots from a short visit to Kew Gardens last Friday. I’m also trying a blog slideshow plug in, which has more images to scroll through. Hopefully it will view correctly in your browser. If you click on a large photo, it will stop the slides changing and display a full frame image. To restart the show, click on the background or thumbnail of your choice.

Shake it, shake, it like a Polaroid picture…..or not!


The instructions from Polaroid issued after the song by OutKast suggested you shouldn’t really shake your valuable instant photographs as they developed. In fact shaking is more likely to cause damage. So however energetic you feel, gently place each picture on a flat surface …..and watch it, watch it! Apparently the idea of shaking your print came from using the old peel-apart material which had a damp surface immediately after developing. Shaking the prints helped them to dry – or so the say. Yesterday I went to Kew Gardens to test my latest photographic acquisition, a Polaroid 320 camera. After […]

Keep it simple, silly!


Over the last two or three years I have been running photo-sessions with colleagues who want to improve their photographic skills. An hour’s guidance can often help people see photography in a completely new way. Usually for personal work, or for those in the transitional stage between film and digital, I find teaching can be rewarding, especially when seeing someone make progress. In most cases, there is a eureka moment – a basic concept suddenly makes sense, with many other things slotting into place. As there is so much information available in books and online that it becomes difficult to […]

Joiners and montages


One of the unusual jobs I did last year was to produce three photo montages for SAGA, illustrating parks that had been restored using lottery grant money. Actually it was one of those jobs that was great fun to do because the brief was very open. I had free range over the interpretation, providing each image was identifiable with each of the respective sites. A rarity! The parks in question were Myatt’s Field in Lambeth, London, Catton Park near Norwich, and Sandall Park near Doncaster. Due to the hot weather in early July 2010, the time scale for shooting was […]

Garden Media Guild


Last Wednesday I was invited by BBC Gardeners’ World to an end of term bash at the Garden Media Guild Awards. All very nice, and I was a finalist in the awards too, with a portfolio of eight images published over the  last 12 months. Along with the award ceremony, which was held at the Brewery in Chiswell Street, there was a three course meal. This included a desert that baffled James Alexander Sinclair, who happened to be sitting at the same table. I hadn’t heard of a Blackberry Tendance either. I wouldn’t normally go on about a lunch, but […]