Garden Photography for 2 whole days

I must admit really looking forward to this part of the course. Only 2 days but my favorite subject. An additional 6 people joined our group, all either on next years terrestrial course or following the new online OCGD pgdip course.

Having it broken down into simple chunks and advised it was about Making not just Taking photo's one realises, once a again, that it's not all that difficult to do but like driving you have to learn the basic chunks off pat - remember how terrifying the old mirror signal manoeuvre thing was the first 100 times?! I do - Taking it our into the field was fun but the Oxford Botanic Gardens probably groaned as we descended on it to practice panning, isolating, story telling and action shots.

To tell truth I got a bit flustered, my lovely and reliable Nikon D70 was playing merry havoc once set to the A (aperture priority) setting and though the book covers all settings, once you start fiddling it becomes like winning the lottery with chances of getting it just right at 1:14,000,000

Finally it played ball, sort of and I focused (pun intended) on the subject matter along with the technical side of making the picture.

On our second day the documentary nature of photography featured and telling the story of Waterperry gardens in 8 shots was our task: establishing, overviewing, detailing and of course making it human interest. I met a lovely couple who were interested in what we were up to (20+ camera laden students raised an eyebrow or two) only to discover fellows of the Leica Society. Small world. Better images today although still plenty of scope for improvement on the Landscape work, I am a macro girl through and through and am toying with the idea of acquiring a lensbaby to further those studies.....just need to sell something first.

Final homework was to post to flickr with the results

Winding down...apparently

This week has been a lot less tedious than anticipated, mainly because instead of two whole days on professional practice an contract law we had two half days.

Disappointingly there was a no show from the supposed expert in contract law which meant we had a very familiar stand in. It is worrying to discover all this potential litigation lining up against us and almost more worrying because the person talking us through wasn't a lawyer so mostly it was based on experience and educated guesswork.

We all left knowing we will need to get a local solicitor on side to review potential contract issues and the standard T's & C's from the SGD.

Happily I took my cameras along on Thursday so headed out to Waterperry for some spring planting which was good in parts although not as spectacular as their summer borders.

En route home tonight I stopped at the Apple store in MK as my laptop has decided it cannot cope with Vectorworks rendering or site modeling (though it claims to be a gaming PC and has separate graphics card or reasonable spec!) So it looks like business set up costs are going to be earlier and more than expected. Funds are having to be diverted from other projects.

Waterperry Gardens, Oxfordshire

After a minor panic about the soft landscape portfolio images for Autumn I rearranged my schedule on the weekend to visit Waterperry Gardens in Oxfordshire.

From 2009-10-10

Recommended for it's borders by CH, wife of Principal D, in her 'Garden of the Month'.

Weather was mixed but thankfully good enough for some dead images certs for the folio. Bumped into at least 2 fellow students, SE and her gorgeous family, TR and saw from a distance NC. We were all out to make the most of our last few autumnal weekends.

The herbaceous borders are all but done although the gone over Eupatorium pupurea and Solidago's were looking as good deceased as they would have full of life set off by the somewhat lively Wisteria which was looking remarkably verdant for this time of year. The simple scale of the borders and plantings was very satisfying.

Rounding a corner or two the grasses (Miscanthus malepartus and Carex ???) alongside Sedum 'Autumn Joy' and Phlomis saria looked equally striking and offered good views back across the aster filled herbaceous borders.

An interesting if odd mix of combinations and as an autumn garden certainly well worth the 90 min trip.

Oh and 2 people go free on and RHS card :)