In the Victorian Language of Flowers, zinnias symbolized missing you, and statice symbolized I miss you. Inspired by that, I imagined a woman looking back over cards, photos, postcards, and her autograph book thinking of friends she hasn’t seen in a while. Perhaps she’ll decide to write one of them a letter after reliving some wonderful memories.
This photograph is available matted to 11 X 14 or 16 X 20
I hope this blog post finds all of you and your friends and families doing well.
I’m here in Bethesda, practicing social distancing, dreaming of photographing flowers. But if things get as bad as they are likely too with COVID-19 virus, it’s going to be a while before any of us are back out visiting gardens and photographing flowers.
I’ve put together a new video – The Beauty of Spring – with some of photos of some of my favorite early blooming spring flowers – to remind all of us of the beauty in the world. My photos are accompanied by Spring from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
Due to the COVID-19 virus, I have cancelled this year’s Gardens of Philadelphia workshop. Based on current news accounts, I doubt the gardens will reopen by early May. We are carefully monitoring the news from CDC, state and local health departments and will be making decisions about our Lightroom and Photoshop workshops in the coming weeks.
Now that it’s March and the weather is starting to really warm up, I’m ready to start photographing flowers outside again! Crocuses and daffodils are starting to bloom here in the DC area, which means many of my favorite spring flowers are just a month or so away from blooming!
If you’re as ready to start planning for spring flower photography as I am, join me in Philadelphia for a week-long flower photography workshop from May 3-9.
Not only will we spend time photographing in many of the 30 gardens in the area, we’ll also explore how to create the photographs that let you share the beauty you are seeing.
During the workshop, we’ll visit at least five gardens or parks to photograph flowers. We will head to the places that have the best displays that week. The gardens we may visit include Bertram’s Garden, Chanticleer, Jenkins Arboreatum, Longwood Gardens, Mt. Cuba Center, Shofuso Japanese House and Gardens, and Winterthur Museum and Garden.
I’m limiting the workshop to four participants to make sure you get the individual help you need in the field as we photograph, and so that I can answer your questions during our evening talks.
The tentative schedule for the workshop is
Sunday May 3: Introductions, Review the Schedule for the Week. Capturing What You See. Monday May 4: Longwood Gardens. Nuts and Bolts of Flower Photography. Tuesday May 5: Winterthur Gardens. Quick Edits in Lightroom. Wednesday May 6: Shofuso Japanese House and Gardens, Bertram’s Gardens. Image Review. Thursday May 7: Chanticleer Gardens. Working with Textures in Photoshop. Friday May 8: Mt. Cuba Center. Image Review. Saturday May 9: Jenkins Arboreatum.
Final decisions about which gardens to visit will depend on schedule, weather and most importantly – what’s blooming where in early May!
The workshop will start after dinner on Sunday May 3 and end before noon on Saturday May 9.
Each evening, we’ll gather for a talk on various aspects of flower photography and editing your photos.
Sunday: Capturing What You See. We’ll talk about composition, lens choice, depth of field and using a tripod. Monday: Nuts and Bolts of Flower Photography. We’ll talk about F-stops, shutter speeds, ISO, exposure compensation and histograms. Tuesday: Quick Edits in Lightroom. We’ll talk about a few quick edits you can make to your photos that will make them “pop” Wednesday: Image Review. We’ll take a look at some of your images from the workshop to make sure you’re getting what you want in your photos. Thursday: Working with Textures in Photoshop. We’ll talk about ways you can add another dimension to your photos using textures. Friday: Image Review. We’ll take a look look at a few more of your photos from the week. And I’ll show you how I might edit some of them.
I’d love to have you join me for a week of photographing flowers in Philadelphia this spring. Not sure if this workshop if right for you? Drop me a note and we’ll find a time to talk.
A beautiful statue of a woman with lilies on the Demosthenes family grave in Greenwich Cemetery in Savannah, Georgia
This photograph is printed using the late 19th-century photographing printing process known as Kallityping. The emulsion is hand-painted onto the paper, exposed with a negative under bright lights, and toned with palladium. Each print from a negative is slightly different – so these are one of a kind images.
The photographs are printed on 8 X 10″ Bergger 100% Cotton Cot 320 paper. They are matted to 11 X 14″ in a white acid-free mat.
These one-of-a-kind kallitypes are available for $ 49.00
