I take loads of photos of my garden. I have ruined many a camera by taking it into the garden. When you start to hear a crunching sound when you try to zoom in on things – this is a death toll ringing. I think since I have been garden blogging – since about August 2010, I have been through maybe 4 cameras. The first was the family camera that I hijacked. That was the one with the crunchy lens, but to be honest sometimes you need to get down low for the perfect shot of seedlings working their way through the soil.
THE ONE
Then there was another one. I believe it was black and is intrinsically linked with disaster so I have done my best to block it from my mind as the thought of the corruption of over 2000 photos on an SD card that were needed to illustrate my first book, still makes me feel ill inside. Luckily I had a good friend who is a techy whiz and he got most of the images back. I never trusted the camera again.
So I bought a snappy little point and shoot thinking this would solve all my problems, but it was too restrictive in what I wanted it to do. Perfect for the tourist taking holiday snaps, but it couldn’t understand what I wanted from it in the garden. So now it is my holiday camera and it is more likely to go crunchy from beach sand than garden soil.
LATE SUMMER AND AUTUMN
By now my interest in photography had developed. (see what I did there…) That and my publishers suggested I have a few lessons from a local photographer before embarking on my second book. So I bought a flash camera – well entry level flash. The instruction pdf was over 200 pages! But I loved learning how to take better images and the why behind it. But I’m still like a learner driver ‘seatbelt, mirror, clutch, gear, mirror, accelerate’ or was that ‘mirror, seatbelt, brake, clutch, gear?…’
WINTER
Last November the good people at WordPress offered something more to add to my growing passion because it would seem alongside writing and gardening, photography has seemed to enter into the hobby category that I could confidently add to those forms you have to fill in from time to time that ask for your hobbies. I joined the WordPress University photography course and shared with you all my attempts at meeting the daily brief. But it was all so I could bring you better gardening images.
SPRING
So now I have found something else to keep me on my photographic toes. The team at Gardening Gone Wild have recommenced a garden photo competition called ‘Picture This’ and I figured why not. Saxon Holt, the photographer on the team at Gardening Gone Wild is pretty amazing and offers good advice to a learner like me.
SUMMER
So now I have to look through last years photos and try to find one that has a strong composition that uses the entire frame to tell my story. I’ll pop in here some of my favourites from last year and the one I pick to enter from those. Some might have been taken with my phone though… shh don’t tell anyone.
Wish me luck.
Come again soon – I’ve ordered new jar lids and they are on the way so preserving can commence imminently.
Sarah the Gardener : o )
Oh best of luck! LOL nothing wrong with an iPhone, but I won’t tell a soul. 🙂
Thanks Julie. Sometimes you stumble across something really cool, and the phone is all you have. They do take pretty cool pictures these days though! Cheers Sarah : o )
Good luck. I take most of my pictures on my phone. Does a pretty good job and anyway our camera was never quite the same after Mud spilt thinners all over it 😉
Hi Elaine. I can’t remember the last time I actually used my phone to talk to someone. These days they are so good at everything and the photos are pretty sharp too. Oh dear about your camera, but I suppose mud uses it for his blog and so therefore it isn’t much different from when I got dirt in the zoomy bit. Just one of the occupational hazards of blogging I guess! Maybe we should all blog about something a little less mess! Cheers Sarah : o )
Love that Pohutukawa flower shot. That’s my fave. Did you have a cooler day down there yesterday, like us? I bottled golden queen peaches and made cucumber and pineapple pickle and did not even break into a sweat in the kitchen! That’s a novelty, this summer!
HI Lindy. It was such a blue sky day when I took the photo of the Pohutukawa. I took loads of shots. The weather has definitely cooled down and we are getting much needed rain. My peaches aren’t ready yet, but I keep checking. Cucumber and pineapple pickle. That sounds interesting – does it taste good?
Cheers Sarah : o )