Photo-graphic Garden

Digital cameras, photo software, and four-color printers are increasingly affordable, and many gardeners long to use these high-tech gadgets to capture the ephemeral moments in their gardens. Professional photographer Matthew Benson believes that successful garden photography is a perfect fusion of technical literacy, narrative intent, and aesthetic understanding. In "The Photo-Graphic Garden", he teaches amateur photographers to set up and edit a point of view in a singular frame, using light, colour, and form as the building blocks. With a primer on the latest digital image-making tools, from cameras to software, and a full discussion on creating a compelling photograph, the garden photographer will learn to capture interactions with plants, people, and places while developing his own visual sensibility. Benson inspires by: coaching the gardener to use the camera to inform and deepen the understanding of garden design and to learn how plants and plant combinations can create aesthetic excitement; presenting rules of good photo composition and advising when to break those rules; teaching how to correct and enhance images in post-production; and, offering advice on choosing photo papers and calibrating printers for dynamic imagery.