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Photo Credit: Pennystone Gardens

At season’s end, pick a few of your best photos and pay for top-quality prints and good frames for a gallery that you can be proud of and that your family and friends will admire.

The fact is, gardens in the Northeast look a bit sad and lonely in winter, and sometimes it feels like spring is never going to come. But one year, I had decided to photograph different parts of my garden at their peak. I took the most memorable images and had nice 8x10 prints made. I bought inexpensive 11x14 frames at a discount store and used the precut mats that came with the frames. Within an hour I had a nice gallery of photos that I now enjoy several times every day – no matter the weather or state of my garden.

Every time I look at these photos, memories of my garden spring to mind – lush, green, inviting memories. And as each winter passes, these very images inspire new garden plans for our next spring. And as my garden changes, so does my photo gallery. Each year I expand the collection a bit (or at least replace older photos).

Whether you’re looking to capture summertime memories in a garden gallery or you just want to learn how to snap some better images of your plants, here are a few photography tips you can take from me (and a few other terrific photographers I know) that’ll help you create stunning images to remember:

First off, you need good lighting. The best natural light of all is when the sky is “high overcast,” which means there are thin clouds that allow just enough light to form faint shadows. This gives the garden even illumination, yet it’s still bright enough to give you lots of freedom in exposures. Any kind of “cloudy” is better than full sunshine – that’s because light reflects off leaves and creates a whitish glare, which creates too much contrast in your photos.