Meditations on White

A long, long time ago, in a city far, far away, my photographs were never in color.  It wasn't only that black and white film was a lot less complicated to develop and print; I just didn't much care for color. (I also spent a lot of time going to Ingmar Bergman films by myself, if that helps). And I had very little interest in gardens, although I lived in a climate of four-season flowers.

Now I live where growing time is limited and color is precious. So white flowers don't really do that much for me. Yes, they light up dark areas in a garden and do a good job of attracting pollinators in forests. But there's something too cold, even forbidding about them.

Azaleas

 

White in western culture brings to mind purity, innocence, even a clean-slate. Brides, babies, and new beginnings. But most East and South-Asian cultures wear white to funerals.  And in "The Whiteness of the Whale" chapter from Moby Dick, Herman Melville writes of the fear induced by the paleness of the dead, the white shroud, the ghost that arises. Then there's the horror experienced when confronted by the abyss that is no color and all colors.  When staring up at the star-filled night sky, Ishmael wonders if the indefiniteness of whiteness "shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way?"

carrot flowers

(Daucus carota subsp. sativus)

 And there's just something sort of creepy about white flowers.  The flowers on the left that bloomed from carrots I never dug up have that "bride of death," horror film feel to them.

 The sweet-smelling yet highly toxic Lily of the Valley below is often used for bridal bouquets.  Seems like an odd or at least an ironic choice.

Convallaria majalis

 

Maybe my aversion is more about the idea of purity and innocence.  

Actual innocence is a kind of blankness, a lack of experience.  Do we exalt that state because it is valuable or because we mourn our spotted lives, our lives cluttered with good and bad, right and wrong. We long for a chance to begin again, to try for perfection by consciously returning to a state of perfection. But it doesn't work that way.

Life is messy. We all do terrible things. And we must live with that. What could be more poignant, what could be more human? This is not to say we should celebrate our mistakes. We celebrate that we live with them. And every experience, every spot and every tear, adds to that life. And, for me, a touch of color adds to, even redeems, the whiteness of a flower.

Starflower (Trientalis borealis)

The Fine Art of Botanical Self-Defense: Spines

So you think spring is the time of soft, green grass; brightly, colored flowers; and sweet smells. And it is. But don't be fooled. That innocent-looking garden is armed and (somewhat) dangerous. Welcome to the world of thorns, spines, and prickles.

First, a quickie lesson and/or review.

Roses don't have thorns--though many poets would have it so.

Roses have prickles.  They can--with the right gloves--be scraped off.  Thorns and spines, not so much.

The sharp plant bits that snag our clothes, puncture our gloveless fingers, and surprise unwanted guests are defined by their tissues rather than the pain they produce.

Thorns are modified branches: think hawthorne trees and flowering quince

Spines are modified leaves: think cacti and holly

Prickles are modified bark or skin (sort of), basically epidermal tissue: think roses

The spines in my garden come in two varieties:  ones that appear at the leaf margins and ones erupting from the branches.

Some California Lilacs (Ceanothus spp.) have small holly-like leaves.  And for most of the year, they're really all you see.  But when the flowers begin to bloom, I often lose sight of the rest of the plant, and want to lean in for a better look

Ceanothus gloriosus ' Pt. Reyes'

But they are so small and the flowers are so very small, that you're practically nose-to-nose with them before you realize how close you're coming to some less than friendly spines.

Barberry (Berberis spp.) was one of the first new plants I encountered when we moved up here. I loved the textures and the colors; it seemed both fierce and graceful and now I have four of them.

The darwinii has these amazingly orange flowers, and, like the Ceanothus above, it has small, spiny leaves.

Berberis darwinii 

 

 

Berberis thunbergii 'Rosy Glow'

On the other hand, the lovely 'Rosy Glow' has smooth, soft leaves. But the spines hide underneath them. 

These spines do more than frustrate the tactile gardener; they protect the plant from actual predators. Neither large animals nor small insects (with relatively large mouths) like munching or even walking through "armed" (truly, the technical term) plants.  Which is probably why these particular shrubs make charming hedges for those whose neighbors are less than congenial.

Brain Mumbles

Maybe it's the rain, but my brain will not latch onto anything, not any one thing. What's a term for being tongue-tied with writing and/or photography? It feels like trying to say "goat snouts mouths" over and over quickly. 

 Go ahead and try it.

That's what my brain feels like.

So the solution is to post nothing? Though I'm more likely to shoot off a "roll" of blah photos than I am to scribble random thoughts, I'm reluctant to post them.  So I just park myself in a corner and sulk.

It's been a year, yet I'm still a total beginner at this blogging thing.  My dear friend (and fabulous blogger)  Dee Dee recently reminded me that not every post needs to be "perfect."  Not every image needs a reason beyond my liking it.

 

 

I like this image

 

 

 

And not every word needs to be anything more than mine.

Maybe I just need to air out my thoughts--once the rain stops--take a deep breath . . . and admire some plant hairs.

I like this image too

Un-Still Photography and Refocusing the Photographer

My husband is a painter, and recently his mentor gave the following assignment to their group:  If I asked you to break one rule you have for yourself regarding watercolor painting, what would it be? It might be a rule from traditional approaches and techniques or one you've set for yourself...

I thought this was a brilliant assignment! Too many times rules (technical, aesthetic, etc.) keep us from discovery.

But it's not that simple. Like driving, I learned social customs late.  Stick close to the rules and no one will realize you've lived way (way) outside them for much of your life. And conformity has its uses and even benefits. At a four-way stop, we agree that the first person there gets to proceed first (though we are foolish if we don't check to make sure we're all on the same page about that). In my old world, there were no four-way stops, no roads of any kind. Every step was like a pebble tossed in a lake, rippling the surface in all directions, in no direction.  So I learned to like roads, stopsigns, and rules. However, rules can become walls just as the lack of them can become chaos. And I became a person on a ledge, hugging the walls for safety from the abyss. But between the wall and the abyss is something else. A universe.

I love Dale Chihuly. I love his work, but, even more, I love his freedom. Watch any video, watch every video of him and you'll see it. If anyone makes art look like fun and fun look like life beyond (not without) rules, it's him.  From his baskets to his gardens, from his ceilings to his forests, there is a kind of confident abandon, there is pure joy.

We'd waited for a sunny day to drive down to Seattle to see "Chihuly Garden and Glass" at the Seattle Center.  Photography was allowed but tripods were not.

I had no desire to use one anyway. Why would I take pictures of these beautiful pieces when excellent reproductions are available in just about every format? Granted, I have taken pictures of plants purely for botanical reproductions. They need to be accurate. They need to show the plants in all their forms. Leaves must show up clearly and buds and fruit as well as flowers need to be recorded. But I don't do much of this anymore. 

"Glass Forest" as still as I could hold it

So there I was, enjoying the exhibits. I had my camera, but not enough light for well-focused, hand-held shooting. So I started moving the camera in ways that reflected what I was getting from the pieces:  sweeping it, jiggling, even jumping it.  Keeping the camera absolutely still is a cardinal rule, particularly for botanical photography. Tripods, mirror lock-up, and cable releases are de rigueur.

So moving the camera around while pressing the shutter felt pretty freeing!  I did get some odd looks. Did I KNOW I wasn't holding still? Did I REALISE moving around was a bad thing with a "still camera"? Yup.  Not having to brace myself, hold my breath and gently squeeze the shutter was enough to make a person giddy. And giddy is exactly what a lot of Chihuly's work makes me feel.

Breaking the rules. I've got a "still" camera. Which means I shoot stills as opposed to moving pictures. But does that necessarily mean I have to be still?  Light "rules" in photography. You change your settings (if you can't change the lighting), or you can change your expectations. 

I found that shots that were just a little out of focus hurt my eyes. I guess the eye muscles were trying hard to get the image into focus or at least to hold still. But once an image was clearly (pun certainly intended) taken while moving, then my eyes accepted the result and relaxed.  And once they relaxed, they could register the view from the merry-go-round that had, a moment before, been a slightly soft-focused chandelier. 

Inside the "Glasshouse," light improved and so did my shutter speed.  The umbrella-like forms seem to follow the people as they walk through on their way to the gardens.  Gorgeous and expected.

 But then I changed my angle and looked up.  And the umbrellas had changed to an abstraction of swirling butterflies, garlanding the Space Needle.  I tried in Lightroom to get the lines "right" and correct the distortions.  Then realized the image was my experience.  The photograph expressed the ride I was on between the wall and space.

 

The Quirks of a Winter's Day

It's dark. 10:23 in the morning, and it's dark. Well, grey. And raining.  Evergreens green

in the backyard forest. And last-year's stalks and stems brown in the beds.  Yes, one resorts to verbing (converting nouns and adjectives into verbs) when so little activity can be observed in the garden.

  It's March, it's still winter. So why oh why are there primroses?

The first time I ever saw primroses, they were displayed outside a big box "garden center" (hardly a center and certainly not a garden, but that's for another time).  I thought they were fake. Even after squeezing the leaves and rubbing the petals between my fingers, I still wasn't certain they weren't another Monsanto product. And even after finding out FOR SURE that they were nature rather than HomeDepot made, I didn't feel the need to add them to my garden. However, this time, in this much grey (and green and brown) I just couldn't resist this blue striped wonder.   

 And then, once I picked it up and carried it around with me, it seemed I'd crossed some horticultural border and gone over to the other side. I photographed it (and its orange and red sisters purchased in some sort of colorized fever), but couldn't get the shots right. 

Perhaps something about them must have made me wince just as I squeezed the shutter.  The depth-of-field, the focus was never what I wanted.

 Maybe my eyes aren't yet ready for full-on summer color?

So what's actually growing and blooming right this minute in my garden?  Hellebores, for a start.  Yes, I know that these two colors (the primroses to the left and the Hellebore below)  clash horribly, but I'm making a point here.  Maybe my winterized eyes need to be eased into the very idea of color.  

And, what is more, many of these flowers with the muted hues of February and March face downwards.

Seems odd at first.  Shouldn't flowers open up for our eyes?  Isn't that why we plant flowers (rather than "plants")?  Some growers are even breeding Hellebores that face out and/or up to satisfy frustrated gardeners who have to contort themselves to see their flowers' "faces."  At least Beverley Nichols had a more reasonable solution. At a recent talk by Marianne Binetti, I learned that he walked about his garden with a mirror attached to a comfortable length of pipe. So if one must see inside a downward-facing flower, one could do so without disturbing the flower or oneself.  But what's wrong with mirrorlessly admiring what they do show?  

Bell-shaped flowers like the Pieris below would lose the beauty of their form and the color supplied by their peduncles and sepals if they hung any other way.  And apparently the double-flowered Hellebores on the left still resist attempts to genetically flip them upwards.  At their current angle, the multiple petals (sepals, actually) seem to float and flutter even on the (rare) windless day.  Fine by me.  

I haven't planted the store-bought primroses yet. Can't quite bring myself to do it in the grey light. Maybe during one of our sun-breaks, they will seem less inappropriate, and I'll get them in the ground before they entirely stop blooming.  Until them, I'll enjoy my downward-facing Snowdrops.

 

Walking on Water

So I wanted to try for a real blogging schedule. Like maybe every two weeks. Other people do it. It may be too much too often for some of my readers, but I'm curious to see what happens when I don't just write when I feel like it or work on photos when I'm in the mood. 

And, of course, it's winter. A FABULOUS time to do garden photography in the Northwest. Yeah, right. Green and grey and brown. A color palette to swoon over. Don't get me wrong--at least not too wrong--I love the seasons up here. All of them. But it's late(r) January, and I'm pretty much done with winter.  Unfortunately, it's not done with me.  

I'm just looking for a little magic now.  OK?   Leaves draped in diamonds. A hillside swathed in fog that's being slowly diluted with a weak, winter sun.  However I seem to have forgotten how to take photographs.  And not just any type of photograph, but MACRO photographs! Every shot I take comes up soft (blurry), muddy (bleh light), and/or just plain boring.  And getting a sharp photo of ice crystals seems totally beyond my vanishing skill set.  Come on!  Is it really that difficult?  Is the heat of my enthusiasm/frustration melting the ice, thus making sharpness moot (mute?). Have I completely lost my macro-mojo or just misplaced it?   Crap

Then one morning a few days ago, I saw a blue heron standing on the pond. Yes, standing ON the mostly-frozen pond.  At first I thought it would take too much time to change from my macro to my 75-300mm lens and change clothes. But I really wanted, needed to be closer to that heron walking on water. I changed lenses, left the tripod, threw a coat over my nightgown, and raced outside. Then spent a wonderful if very chilly 45 minutes inching my way closer and closer, snapping shots all the way and trying to keep from shaking the camera with my shudders.  At that I was still selective and took about 96 shots. None are "tack sharp" and I don't care. The heron even looked me in the eye (at least it appeared that he/she did from the distance) and didn't leave. Not until I turned back to get my very blue self back indoors. Then it vanished.

The second gift I received (because that lovely bird was a serious gift) came in a wonderful blog entry by nature photographer Rob Sheppard titled "Savoring vs. Harvesting Nature Photography."  He wrote about how photographers can go through periods where filling a memory card and rushing back to the computer for post-processing can become more important than savoring the experience of nature. Slow down and fill yourself with those moments BEFORE taking the picture. 

I began taking pictures because I wanted to be closer to what I was seeing. If I found myself staring at something for longer than a few minutes--a flower, tree bark, light breaking apart on ice--then I knew I needed to photograph it. But when time pressures and technical issues push these moments aside,  the resulting images (as well as my own experiences) suffer. 

So I went back to my ice photos and found a few that looked better to me.  The images are far from ideal, but there were leaves draped in icy diamonds that day.  I just didn't see them until I spent some time with a blue heron taking a stroll across a frozen pond. 

 By the way, if you'd like to take a look at Rob Sheppard's blog, it's Nature and Photography http://www.natureandphotography.com/

Winter Cures: Bones, Berries, and Post-Processing

It was two days before Christmas, when I started trying to write this blog post, and no snow in sight. Like this old barn, the world outside my window looked cold, beaten, plain, and stubborn. 

Without snow or even sub-freezing temperatures, the plants were confused. Well, they're hardly confused. They just react to what is, and what IS--still--is a very grey autumn in winter:  lots of empty branches but a defiant few with dead yet clinging leaves. I could go on about how they are like an elderly grande dame, clinging to her faded youth with too much makeup and an inappropriate décolletage, but I won't.

This spirea would be perfect for autumn but right now just seems to be trying too hard.  

At least these Caryopteris seed heads have the right idea:  browns (crispy browns) after Thanksgiving are de rigueur.

I've been looking at how others approach their gardens in winter, how they use the mostly leafless landscape to reveal the "bones" of the garden: the basic shapes and structures hidden for most of the year by the leaves and flowers and even fruit we buy plants for. And yet I must admit I don't have the stomach for photographing my garden's anatomy. 

It seems intrusive: naked and asleep, who would welcome a prying camera?  And, yes, bones reveal the garden's internal architecture, but x-rays are really only interesting to radiologists and then only if something is very very wrong. And even when I repressed my natural disinclination, my shots of bare branches looked like shots of bare branches. Nothing revealing or even titillating. Just chaotic lines crisscrossing my (almost) monochromatic beds.  

However, fruited branches are another matter, and, with Beautyberry (Callicarpa ssp), the fruit is probably one of the only reasons to photograph (or grow) the plant. Nothing like a little neon purple to wake up the color sensors. 

And add water droplet and you've got another dimension.

 

But it's raining (again), so it's time to settle in for some post-processing. My distractions of choice are Lightroom 4 dot whatever and Photoshop Elements 10. By the way, no one, and I mean NO ONE, is better at teaching Lightroom than Laura Shoe.  I keep her DVDs by my computer because they are they best resource I've found.  A link to her website can be found on the left under the list of "Blogs I Follow." PSE is something I'm always in the process of learning, but, as yet, I am still guru-less on that front. 

Now please understand, I'm not into putting rose heads on sunflower plants or cat-heads on dogs. But most photographs (at least, most of my photographs) need a little tweaking, particularly if you shoot in raw mode.  But it's winter, and sometimes you just have to turn things upside-down just to shake loose the ideas.

So I'll end with a dull view of our pond and its anchored raft on a dull winter's day.

And if you invert it you get something out of Dr. Who

All I did was crop and flip and diddle with the color and lighting.  Nothing added.

Sometimes you've just got to amuse yourself when your garden won't cooperate.