With the impending holiday approaching, I’m pleased to have discovered  these valentine inspired botanical fine art prints by Due Alberi.    Due Alberi is a two person husband and wife team based in Rome.  Antonia and Fabio create images from flowers and nature and not only are the seasonal prints lovely, but I am also enjoying the more modern art prints that I put in the gallery.

(images from Due Alberi)

Last week, in preparation for the next issue of Leaf Magazine, I worked a little photo shoot with Roanne Robbins (as the floral creator) and Lisa Aciukewicz (as photographer).  I thought it would be fun to share a few behind the scenes shots with you….as well as tell you about my newest toy!

Here is the behind the scenes stuff….

yep — that picture was a last minute addition after the ‘too blank’ background wall just wasn’t going to do it for us….I tore it off my own dining room wall and dashed (with fingers crossed for it to work) back to the shoot.  Turned out to be perfect!

But here is the part I really want to tell you about….I got to use one of my very favorite christmas presents for the first time.  My sweet husband dutifully followed along with my very explicit pinterest board that documented exactly what I wanted for christmas, and gave me this pretty yellow new girlie camera bag from Jo Totes.   It’s all set up inside to be a very good camera bag and it’s as good as it looks.  I got lots of ohhs and ahhs when I walked in with it, and I would happily recommend it to you.  (and it’s only $109!!)

Oh Dear!– look what I’ve just discovered.  The photography of Tim Pugh has me crushing on him like I crush on Andy Goldsworthy and other landscape and environmental artists.  Tim’s photos have a rustic earthiness though that brings a sense of grunge and romance to the painstakingly created pieces making him just a little bit different in a way I kinda like.

Even better Tim teaches workshops to show others how to make something beautiful from nothing but found objects and nature. See his website for more details.

I had few revelations over the weekend. Not the least of which was that I need to settle down and get back to a sense of routine and normalcy. The summer (with kids out of school, travel, lots of distractions and outside projects, and heat) has this way of upending everything. Add to that a new venture (Leaf magazine) and I have simply been totally topsy turvy.
Part of the revelation came when I had the pleasure of lunching with a group of bloggers, writers, artists and designers that all have the singular connection of Holly Becker. Holly was Boston on her book tour and this group was largely made up of women who she was friends with from her own Boston days, alumni from classes, and close colleagues. It was great to meet, in person, so many people I have known only online for so long.

Chatting with Holly I realized that she has gone through so many similar evolutions and has seemingly effortlessly moved from one success to the next. But her version of how it all happened is not so effortless…as she took time to write a beautiful book (in just 8 months) she kept her blog going daily, she moved to another county, and kept her blog going daily….she has taught classes and kept her blog going daily. Admittedly, she points out, she often works 100+ hours per week, but she has kept all the balls in the air and I found inspiration in that. She is going for it (her dreams) and that is hard work.   Now I am not saying I don’t work hard….I do, but I have let myself dither a few times too many in the last month and my brief chat with Holly made me realize that I just need to keep doing, moving….and getting to that new place where I want to be.

Launching Leaf is a huge shift for me – but one that I have been plotting for quite some time, and now that I am actually leaping into it, (as I said) I have been very discombobulated. Holly snapped me out of that with a quiet and to-myself  ‘get it together Rochelle’ moment.

The pieces are settling, kids go back to school next week, the farmers market is officially up and running and in full swing,  my last design project has all but wound up, and I am getting my head around the fact that instead of over-thinking what I write here, I need to just let studio ‘g’ be the place that I continue to share what inspires me. Even if it evolves. We all evolve and the fact is, I have chosen to become the founder of an online magazine about Outdoor Design and leave the day to day of running a landscape design business. I will be choosing (in time) to head off in other new directions too and all of those are part of an evolution.  Studio ‘g’ can’t not evolve with me.

So what has been on my mind lately? Magazine Covers, Fonts, Layouts, Photographers, Graphic Designers, Networking, Trends, Products, Stories, and reaching out to people.  I met a writer named Laura Gaskill this weekend.  She writes the lovely blog Lolalina. A visit there, sent me mentally back on photographer and layout tangents, particularly when I read about Petra Bindel (who took all these photographs).

I love the Swedish light and particularly the styling of these shots, and am interested in learning from this inspiration, so I can apply it to Leaf.

Also — these shots are feeding an unhealthy obsession I have recently developed — it involves building an old-school shed style glass green house (just like my grandmother had when I was a kid) off the backside of my dining room.   I dream it will bring in Swedish-like light.

all images from Petra Bindel

I am not sure how I feel about being old enough to see fashions and fads truly recycle themselves.  I remember my grandmother and mother saying to me “Thats not new….I remember when blah blah was the fashion back when I was….blah blah”.  Well, now I am saying it.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with my sun block printing kit.   I loved it and it seemed at the time like something lots of other people did too…..so the resurgence of this pretty way to capture a bit of your garden for your home couldn’t please me more, even if it does make me sound like my mother and make me wonder if I may need to begin lying about my age.

Have you noticed the resurgence of sun prints?

Sun printing was originally developed by Anna Atkins (a British botanist, 1799-1871) who used the process to document and catalog plants.  She felt it was more accurate than her drawings.  There is a great telling of the story of her and the algea that she first documented at Venetian Red.

The process (as applied to not just scientific record keeping) reveals beautiful results that are perfect for decor of all kinds.

Here is my round up of all the sunblocking that is catching my attention:

Blueware Tiles, vases and even lampshades by Studio Glithero.

Both Martha  Stewart and Garden Design have nice write-ups about the how-tos and you can get printable fabric at blue prints on fabric.

You can also learn more about doing it yourself from a new book by  Christine Schmidt of Yellow Owl Workshop.

I am excited to give this old craft of mine a new twist….maybe I can even get my kids hooked on it, and one day when they are 30 something, they can say, hey- “that’s not new,  I used to do blah blah back when I was blah blah…”;)

To see more sun-spiring print inspiration, check out my newest pinterest board.

images from Martha  Stewart , Garden Design, Rinne Allen,  and that cake (which is not really cyanotype but an airbrushed edible copy) is from Once Wed.

I am so excited to introduce you to the first of a few guests I have lined up while I am away.  Rich Pomerantz garden imagess have been published in garden design, National Geographic the New York Times and many great publications in between.  I asked Rich to talk to us about how he thinks garden design and garden photography intersect.  I have this theory that to get better at one will guide getting better at the other….and after reading Rich’s wisdom, I think I might be right!  Rich……

Many gardeners enjoy photographing their garden designs. Doing so gives them the chance to record their work or that of the gardens they visit. It also preserves the memory of a garden at a point in time. But did you realize how improving your garden photography skills can help your design abilities?  There are many aspects to each discipline that overlap, but they are not always so obvious. I’ll discuss a few.

There are several things that are critical to good photography that are also important in garden design. Master photographers know that light is a primary consideration.

Light has color, direction and intensity. Every good designer takes into account the direction of the natural light when laying out a garden. If they do not the garden is likely to be either a terrific failure or just mediocre, as the plants will not receive the light they need to grow properly.  The best garden designers also think about the intensity of the light at different times of the seasons when planning their plantings. Knowledge of what can thrive in partial shade versus full sun and where the sun will hit in May, and then where it will hit in September will certainly inform the planting scheme.  As a photographer I always want to know where the light will be coming from at different times of the day and I plan my shooting accordingly.  If I want to photograph a backlit miscanthus in September,

then it ought to be planted to take advantage of the light hitting it across the garden from behind.

Perhaps the most obvious overlap is in composition.  Good photographic composition follows the same rules that we learn from art history like the rule of thirds, use of leading lines or curves to lead the eye into and around the frame, and the use of pattern, among others.  Smart garden design will use many of the same ideas, in three dimensional and living forms. So we see in formal gardens (and many not-so-formal ones) the use of axial lines leading to a focal point,

which give us leading lines and lead the viewer/visitor to the “prize” at the end, which becomes a primary subject in the artist’s composition. Most gardeners have been told about planting in odd numbers, which is a variant on the rule of thirds.

In photography, as in other art forms, once the rules are mastered then more complicated and interesting ideas can be explored, using the foundation already built. Successful idiosyncratic gardens work well because the designer has taken her own idea and imprinted them over a framework of the basics.   The famous “blue stairs” at Naumkeag is a variant on the axial line leading to a focal point, and has been photographed like this a million times.

But the genius of Fletcher Steele’s design is that it goes beyond the axis to be a fascinating abstraction placed on that landscape when viewed from any angle, so I made this image from a not-so-obvious angle to create a more idiosyncratic impression of the design.

Photographing gardens can certainly give you a stronger visual discipline and a better understanding of why certain photographs work and others do not, and where the problems may lie in the design of the garden.  So there is an additional benefit to photographing gardens! Not only will you take home your interpretations of beautiful locations and plant ideas, and not only will you retain the memories of the gardens you visit, but by working on your photography skills while snapping those lovely photos of the gardens you visit, you can also improve your design skills.

Rich has a great blog with more beautiful photography and great insight that is worth checking out.