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.

 

Shooting Edge-On

Walk through any public garden in spring, and you'll see strollers admiring the flowers. Stooping slightly, they'll pull their cameras to their faces, position the viewfinder or LCD parallel to the ground, and snap shot after shot of those sunny, open, plant-catalog blossoms. Every detail in focus, the colors bright and depthless, seemingly honest in their accessible flatness.  Everything revealed.  Maybe.  Seeing everything isn't always the same as experiencing everything.  And “tack sharp” isn't always the gold standard in plant photography. At least not for me.

Sitting on the ground, is when I really take the time to look closely at a flower. It's the view of rabbits and cats, who take little notice. And only when I pause in my weeding or planting do I.  Eye-level and edge-on, I see moods (theirs or mine, I don't really know). And it's the ironic gift of a camera's shallow depth of field, revealing more when some edges are left unedged. When far petals softly echo (or contend with) those close by. 

Hellebores present an interesting challenge.  Most of them face downwards.  It's frustrating when you think of "flower" as full-on, open face.  Before putting this newly acquired Helleborus x hybridus 'Mardi Gras Pink' in the ground, I pulled its face upwards to get some shots.

That's a face alright.  And you get to see the pretty design on the petals and the anthers and pistil.  Open and honest . . . and, to my taste, sort of boring.

After awhile, I planted it and moved on.  Then, a week or so later, I was kneeling in the bed, weeding, when I found myself watching the Hellebores.  

Some facing down, some facing away, and all of them beautiful in their restraint; almost coy or maybe simply demure.  Like the edges of a parasol, the petals suggest something precious shielded from the heat of a direct gaze. 

So out came the camera and tripod.  Flat on my stomach, chin in the dirt to look through the viewfinder, I found an angle that gave me a much better sense of what this flower actually is, at least for me..  Same variety, but in a more characteristic position.

Getting every detail of a macro shot in focus is fun, I'll admit it.  You feel like you've mastered something, captured something your eyes don't always have time to observe in even a careful glance.  But shallow depth of field can highlight a single detail or a shape that says far more about the charm as well as the complexity of a flower.

I bought some African Daisies (Osteospermum 'Astra Purple Spoon' and 'Astra Pink Spoon') to photograph because I couldn't resist those spoon-like petals.  After trying all sorts of angles, I sat down next to the table I'd placed outdoors to position them at a more convenient level--it was muddy outside and I wasn't in the mood to change pants.  Glancing over at them, I saw that I could express how bright and playful they seemed to me by shooting from the edges and working with much less in focus.

The 'Purple' to the left beckons to the viewer with its alien-pod petals, while  the 'Pink' below appears to be lit from within, and the trumpeting colors in both seize the focus.

 

Lastly, one edge-on image I especially love is this Anemone 'Honorine Jobert.'  Earlier in my life, I was a dancer.  And this flower at this angle says so much to me about the quiet center, the "still point," at the apex of a leap or the core of a pirouette, or the lift of an arabesque.