May Garden Recce

For all the time spent at my desk editing, retouching, selecting and rejecting, and all maner of photo-related, computer based tasks; it makes for a really nice change to get out of the house into the sun as part of the job and experience and learn new things. Today I accompanied one of my clients, Mary, a locally based garden designer to view six of her finished gardens in Sussex with a view to photographing a select few for ‘flagship’ images to display at her 10th Anniversary bash later on in the year.

When working with commercial clients, I always enjoy hearing them tell me how they do what they do and gaining some insight into the intricacies and challenges of the job as well as the ups and downs. In Mary’s case, it was no different, indeed I can empathise with a lot of what she said due to the creative nature of her work.

My job is to show each of the gardens in their best light and whilst I can’t really convey the past in the shots, it was fascinating to hear about and see photos of the gardens as they were before Mary redesigned them. Some of them are near unrecognisable from how they looked before and have totally opened up, both visually and practically, allowing their owners to enjoy them to their fullest.

Next up is figuring out which gardens to photograph when, as well as figuring out the dressing required for each space. With my interest in horticulture, it’s a project I’ve been looking forward to for some time now, and I can’t wait to see the finished results.