The Secret Sauce

Taking photographs of plants is a hobby decades in the making for me. Thousands of plant images every year.  And there is one thing that all the photos I love best have in common. "What is that secret sauce?" you say. In truth, it is nothing. Sure, there is a good composition, ample lighting, and a steady hand. But pictures I don't love can have that too. All the good ones have nothing from me in them. I was the conduit, but it is all about letting the plants speak for themselves. No fancy filters or crazy photoshop techniques can do as much as stepping back and letting the plant speak for itself. They all have their own beauty and stories to tell. 

Wintergreen in a mossy bed in a beech grove

Wild strawberry along a woodland trail

   

Special and Unique Places: The Bog

There are few places that offer a more unique glimpse into the natural world than a bog. It is a pocket of conditions as well as flora and fauna that are completely different than the surrounding locale. I am fortunate to have visited a local bog on a few occasions which is not only a protected botanical preserve but it has also been designated as National Natural Landmark by the National Park Service. This place, The Zurich Bog, is located in Arcadia, New York. It is off the beaten trail to be sure, but the trip is worth it to see such a place of unique beauty. 

The Zurich Bog preserve encompasses hiking trails through a bog forest and a peat bog. There is a floating bog, a mat of vegetation over a pond, but access onto the floating bog is generally not permitted nor entirely safe.

The pictures below are only a few of the species seen there.

If you are a gardener please take note, such special places are threatened by the harvesting of the peat moss for the gardening industry. Even this protected location is threatened by the draining of water in order to harvest peat that goes on outside of the preserve. If these places are special to you as well, please choose soil mixes without peat in them. Read more about why to use no peat here.

Here are photos from the Zurich Bog Preserve. Click on any of the images to see a larger view.

Grass Pink Orchid (Calopogon pulchellus)

Tamarack (Larix laricina)

Northern Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea). Last image is the pitcher plant bloom.

White Fringed Orchid (Platanthera blephariglottis)

Spoonleaf Sundew (Drosera intermedia)

Goldthread (Coptis trifolia). Second photo also includes starflower (Trientalis borealis) and Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense).

Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora)

Club Moss (Lycopodium sp.). Second picture also includes goldthread (Coptis trifolia), partridge berry (Mitchella repens), and hemlock (Tsuga sp.).

Partridge Berry (Mitchella repens)

Starflower (Trientalis borealis)

Bog Rosemary (Andromeda polifolia)

Indian Cucumber (Medeola virginiana)

Labrador Tea (Ledum groenlandicum)

Links:

The Bergen Swamp Preservation Society

The Zurich Bog

Early Spring Wildflowers

I love early spring wildflowers. But you must be vigilant in looking for them. If you blink with some (like the Twinleaf) you will miss them entirely. The twinleaf flowers last less than a day once they open. By nighttime, the petals have dropped. Here are a few from my woodland garden this spring.

Bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis

Celandine Poppy, Stylophorum diphyllum

Twinleaf, Jeffersonia diphylla

Squirrel Corn, Dicentra canadensis

Just Take a Breath

Dame's Rocket

While you can certainly use tripods in your botanical photo taking, I find that lugging the extra equipment around and then setting it up destroys the ability to capture the essence of simple beauty and the sincerity of the moment that Mother Nature presented to us. All my nature photography is done without tripods and without "gardening" or otherwise setting up the shot. I take the shots as I find them for I believe that Mother Nature has the best eye for photo composition.

But since all the shots are taken by hand, it requires more - if you'll excuse the pun - focus put into each shot otherwise the result is a fuzzy mess. To do this, isn't hard and it starts with a simple breath. Take a breath and hold it for just the moment it takes for you to snap the picture. Amazingly in that held moment, you become so mindfully aware of your body and its every motion. It is a moment of mindful meditation where you become more aware of the tiniest of details - things that are often below your threshold of awareness. And in that attentiveness, you become still and you become very focused. So with breath held, body stilled, and your attention sharpened, you look to your subject and gently press the camera's button.

Give it a try. What moments of gentle beauty can you capture?


To inspire you, I captured the shot above and the couple below on a ten minute walk this morning...

Apple blossoms (I love the blush of pink)

Banded snail on dandelions

New foliage and flower clusters on wild grape

Get Down Onto Your Belly

Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens)

The biggest tip I could give people for taking good plant pictures (other than buying a good camera to start with!) is get low, real low. Get down to the plant's level to take your photo. Sometimes in the case of tiny plants like wintergreen, it means you are at least kneeling or even on your belly to take the shot. The lovely part of getting down to take this picture was the soft and incredibly carpet-like nature of the moss bed in this beech grove (visible in this shot).