A not so successful snowdrop shot

The morning light crests the hill.  The birds are singing their spring songs.  I have the garden to myself.  I take a deep breath, I bend forward. I exhale. I take a deep breath and come back to standing.  I take a deep breath and bend at the knees to a crouching position.  I breathe and stretch a little further.  I exhale and come back to standing.  No, I am not practicing yoga in the garden (though that might be nice). I am contorting my body and holding my breath to capture that perfect photo of the March Bank in its full snowdrop glory.  I wish I could say that I got the result I was looking for.  The truth is that the camera can not fully deliver the experience of seeing something in person.  I had what I thought to be the right elements in place; morning light, overcast conditions, multiple angles yet it barely captured what I was seeing.

My husband was a professional photographer in an earlier life and has provided me some tutelage along the way.  I set up the scenario of my “yoga shots” and asked him what went wrong.  He mentioned a few terms—manually opening the aperature, bracketing, f-stops—things that the average “point and shoot” photographer may not know.  Essentially it comes down to the camera’s light meter averaging out all that it was taking in—pure white, reflective flowers on a dark background. The camera “averaged to middle grey”; the end result, a mediocre picture.   He went on to sing the praises of the of the human brain; how our eyes are constantly “adjusting the light meters”, continuously sending multiple exposures to our brain and our brain seamlessly puts them together to create the perfect picture and the perfect experience. 

 I bring up my photographic failure not because I enjoy public humiliation but to emphasize that there is no replacement for the true experience.  This is becoming more and more relevant as we enter the instantaneous digital-virtual world of webcams, video, and photography and where one can “tour” a garden or museum over the computer.  It is great to be able to type in a few key words and have an image of Van Gogh’s Starry Night magically appear on the computer screen but it is no substitution for the real thing; looking closely at the brush strokes and then stepping back and seeing the image that is created and the emotion that is evoked at that moment. 

Gardens by their nature, in close alliance with sporadic weather, consistently create a certain “viewing urgency” similar to the final days of an art exhibition. Friday’s unseasonable temperatures in the 70’s pushed a lot of things into flower and a lot of things out of flower.  If you missed the large sweeps of snowdrops this year then mark it on your calendar for 2012.  If you want to see the March Bank in its “blue phase”, the period when the entire hillside transforms into a blue oasis, then plan on a visit this week and if you can swing it, visit at different times of the day.  The mood of the March Bank changes dramatically between the rising and setting of the sun. The continuous movement and intensity of the sunlight plays off of the rolling nature of the hillside, creating shadows and depth of color in some spaces while highlighting other locations.   Like the Van Gogh painting, a great amount of detail can be viewed from up close—variations in flowers and in foliage color,  but the view from afar is pure drama.  Blue is another color that is difficult to truly capture through the lens; it often can appear more purple in color than what our eyes see. I have witnessed the March Bank in this performance role for 20 years now and no two experiences are alike.  One year the effect lasted for 3 weeks, one year it hardly even made an appearance and one year I witnessed the blue at near sunset and it was electric; this is the moment where I remember the drama and emotion.  I am confident that the lens could not have captured that…

Today’s fall weather brings to my mind the sensation of biting into of a crisp apple. Sharp and clear, sweet and organic. The crisp air and bright sunshine pair perfectly with my favorite wool jacket and soft burgundy scarf. When I walked in this morning, the low bright light through the trees was practically begging to be photographed. Rushing to the garden, I caught a few frames of the light coming through autumn-hued leaves. 

This is one of my favorite months in the Winterthur Garden as fall color usually peaks during the last week of October. Hope you will have a chance to walk in the garden this month. Enjoy!

This last Saturday was the first for Winterthur’s Farmstand. A beautiful day and farm fresh vegetables combined to create a successful day for our farmers, Tim and Amy, and HG Haskell of SIW Vegetables.

Recently, Winterthur was loaned a fantastic collection of historical Winterthur garden photos to scan. George Fistrovich, Winterthur’s staff photographer from 1969 to 1999, gave John Feliciani a box of 69 color slides, taken between 1968 and 1984, to scan for our records. (John is Winterthur’s Director of Horticulture.)

The beautiful photographs are a great new addition to our collection. Here is a selection of 12. You will see why we are all so excited.

If you or any family members have any images of the Winterthur garden more than 20 years old, we would love to see them and, if possible, scan them for our records. Send us to them digitally to mlidz@winterthur.org or contact Maggie at 302-888-4906. Special thanks to George and John for their assistance!

Photos of Winterthur taken by guests, volunteers, and staff members can be viewed through the “Winterthur garden” group on Flickr. It is fun to see the many different ways the Winterthur garden can be captured on film (or should I say “on chip”) by avid photographers.

Just as it inspired Mr. du Pont, we hope that the garden will encourage contemporary photographers to capture Winterthur on film (or in pixels). This last spring Allen Rokach offered a photography workshop that produced dozens of beautiful student images. With the availability and ease of use of digital photography and the internet, images of Winterthur are beginning to appear on quite a few local web pages. Ed Heaton has taken beautiful images of the garden for his blog and Winterthur has recently appeared in a couple of personal travelogues (another travelogue). If you’ve taken photographs of Winterthur that you would like to share, make a comment on this post and I will get in touch with you about putting your work on our Garden blog.

This last spring Winterthur hosted a photography workshop with teacher and photographer Allen Rokach. Allen’s students spent two days exploring Winterthur and, with the help of his artist’s eye, captured beautiful moments in our chilly April garden. All of the images below have been provided courtesy of the students (and Allen) for this gallery. Over the rest of the summer I will continue to post galleries of their creative images.

This September we will be welcoming Allen back for another lecture on photography. He’ll be joining us at GardenFair on September 28th as we explore the theme ’Artist and Gardener.’ Allen will show lecture attendees how to expand their imagination by looking at flowers and gardens in fresh and unusual ways. For more information on this and other activities at GardenFair visit our website.

Save the date for GardenFair

September 26-28, 2008

Photographers (left to right):
Ann Kuehner, Eric Loken, Eric Loken
Laurette Sisk, William Hill, William Hill