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Garden photography during the first days of summer

Making Pictures With Professional Photographer John Enman
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Last Wednesday was the first day of summer and I had yet to wander our garden for my monthly photo session with the flowers growing there.

I had ventured into the garden with my camera in May, and although I photographed some early blooming roses and tulips, there wasn’t as much going on. However, since then, the cool spring days here in the Interior of British Columbia have lengthened and warmed and the summer heat is coming. Everything is in bloom and waiting for my first-days-of-summer photographic expedition.

There was a clear sky and slight breeze as I walked around in the cool morning. It was comfortable, but neither worked for me. I was hoping for some clouds and didn’t like the breeze at all, so I waited.

About 2 p.m. slight clouds started gathering and the breeze quieted. I attached a flash on a lightstand, mounted a 70-180mm macro on my camera and started searching the garden.

It doesn’t matter if I am photographing a person or a flower, I like to use an off-camera flash. Sure there is nice natural light once in a while, but it is so much easier to control the light with a flash then to hope and wait for the sun to be just right.

Normally I like using an umbrella, but there was that intermittent breeze. It didn’t bother my waiting subjects too much, but the tiny gusts could easily blow my flash over with the large umbrella, so I left it on the porch and began photographing flowers using the diffuser that came with the flash.

A flash lets me control the ambient light using the shutterspeed, I just stop down my aperture to disguise elements by under exposing, or open up to reduce depth of field.

I thought about getting in the car and driving over to the pond to check out the geese, or maybe make an attempt at photographing a nearby waterfall crashing loudly into Chase creek. Those are more exciting than photographing flowers, but this year I promised myself I’d get a good record of the flowers. Anyway, the afternoon garden and the neighbourhood was quiet, the plants were there waiting and I was too lazy to go for a drive.

Summer is here and the flower’s bloom won’t last long. The mountains around here have ticks, snakes, and maybe hungry bears (well, probably not hungry bears and I haven’t seen a rattler in years). The water is too high to get good shots of the waterfalls, and anyway, if one waits another week there will be plenty to photograph on Canada Day.

For now I suggest one more leisurely foray, with camera and flash, into the garden before summer’s heat takes the bloom’n colour away.

These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net. Stop by Enman’s Camera at 423 Tranquille Road in Kamloops. I sell an interesting selection of used photographic equipment.

Don’t hesitate to call me at 250-371-3069.