John Sylvester - taking garden pictures

John Sylvester (right) shows a garden club member photos from his latest book, 
Prince Edward Island - Landscape & Light.

The November 2014 meeting of the Garden Club of PEI featured John Sylvester, a PEI photographer who has published a number of books of photos of landscapes and gardens across PEI and Atlantic Canada.  His photos have also graced the covers of gardening magazines such as Canadian Gardening

He showed slides of pictures he has taken all over the world, including Hawaii, Iceland, California, and in national parks and gardens across Canada.

He started by showing us a close-up of a bright orange calendulla from the cover of Canadian Gardening. That issue also featured an article about the garden of our own garden club member Ken MacDonald.  Photos ranged from close-ups to a shot of Ken tending his garden, taken from the vantage point of the garage roof.

John has also done articles and pictures of Roger Yonker's rose garden, Betty Lou Frizzell's fall garden, and Carolyn Aiken's misty morning summer garden.

"In a well-designed garden, a lot of the work of composing a good shot has been done for me," says John.

He also offered tips on taking pictures of everything from tiny individual flowers to huge landscapes:

• Take a variety of images, from close-ups to landscapes, to tell the story of your garden
• Mid-day light is too harsh, creates strong shadows, and washes out colours.   Take photos in early morning or late afternoon or on an overcast or rainy day or in shade, where the light is softer and the colours are more saturated.  The "magic hour" is one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset.
• If it is too dark, use a screen to bounce the flash onto the subject to get a softer light.
• Some flowers open only in bright sunlight.  If you must take pictures in bright sunshine, wait for a cloud to pass overhead to achieve richer colour.
• Use a tripod to eliminate camera shake - the pictures will be more crisp and clear.  "Setting up a tripod slows you down, and makes you pay more attention to composition."
• If you don't have a tripod, raise the ISO to 400 to 800, and hold the camera very steady
• Always consider the background - is it too busy, distracting the eye from the subject?
• Add raindrops to a flower with a spray bottle
• Use a polarizing filter to remove reflections and saturate colours, achieving a bluer sky
• Fall colours are best photographed on an overcast day - use a polarizing filter
• Use selective focus/depth of field to highlight the subject, allowing other objects to fade into the background:  fstop 2.8-4.0 to isolate individual flowers
• A wide angle lens gives greater depth of field. Use fstop 16 to 22 for an overall view of the garden, which gives a sharp focus to everything.
• Keep track of what is in bloom on PEI - eg. lupins and lady's slipper bloom at the same time in May
• Mosquitos are at their worst when lady's slippers are blooming in the woods!
• Taking pictures in windy conditions is a challenge.  A long exposure give a blurred effect of motion.
• When taking pictures of individual flowers, get down low, and set up a tripod
• To avoid hot spots or reflections, shade your subject with tinfoil or bristol board or a special shade or diffuser
• Or place the shade on the opposite side of the angle of the sun, so that the light bounces off and lights the dark side of the flower.
• A macro lens for taking closeups gives a shallow depth of field - the background will be blurred
• To achieve a starburst effect, shoot up into the sun, partially obscuring the sun eg. with leaves

Check out John Sylvester's beautiful photos at http://www.johnsylvester.com/