If You Grow it, Bugs Will Come: Four Lessons

Last summer I had a client that wanted me to take some photographs that included bugs in them. That's a nice request and a fun challenge--but they needed the photos the next day. I thought their request was a bit nuts and never expected to be able to actually find and photograph a bug on command, but I actually completed the assignment--and was even able to give them a choice of bugs--including this green-looking bee (I have no idea what it is). The trick was just sitting in my garden, camera on tripod, and waiting. Low and behold, within about 10 minutes of sitting there staring at some black-eyed Susans, a small moth showed up. Then some bees. Then this green thing.

Even though I've spent most of my life gardening, I guess I never realized just how many bugs hang around gardens--because in the past I either ignored them or was annoyed by them. But suddenly, with an assignment on the line, bugs became my friends. I was able to spend almost an hour photographing this little guy because (lesson number one) he kept coming back to the same flowers over and over. And also, once I set up the camera next to a particular blossom (lesson number two), he (or she) pretty much ignored me.

Later I got even more hip (I'm slow on the uptake sometimes) because once the light fell off of the flowers I was shooting, I picked some flowers, put them in a vase and put the vase on a picnic table in the sun--and, amazingly enough, the bugs followed me. While not as many came to the flowers in the vase, apparently they like the sunlight (lesson number three) because they were ignoring the flowers in the shade in my garden and hanging out with me in the sunlight.

The last lesson for the day was that you should always take on a challenge even if you think you might fail. What's the worst I could have told this client? Sorry, no bugs today? That's not my fault! But as it was they were pleased, I made some cash and the bugs are now famous.

The bugs are waiting for you--so if you're looking for something fun to shoot, go sit out in the garden. By the way, I used a 105mm Micro Nikkor lens and a 20mm extension tube for this shot and I used a small aperture to get some depth of field.

Cultivate Flower Photos, Visit a Botanical Garden

If you like to photograph flowers and plants but don't have the time or room for a garden at home, consider making a trip to a local botanical garden. Even if you do garden a lot at home, you'll get to see things at a botanical garden that most home gardeners could simply never grow and in quantities that are extraordinary. Wherever I travel in the world, in fact, one of the things that I seek out are the local gardens and botanical collections.

Most gardens have two types of displays: formal outdoor gardens and indoor conservatories. Longwood Gardens just south of Philadelphia, for example, has around 1,000 acres of outdoor gardens and more than 4.5 acres of indoor gardens! In fact, the conservatory contains more than 5,500 different types of plants growing in 20 different gardens. Another favorite haunt of mine is the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx and it features 250-acre landscaped acres, 50 curated display gardens, a 50-acre native Forest and more than a million different plants--all waiting to be photographed. I photographed the water lilies shown here at the NYBG in one of several nice reflecting pools behind the main conservatory (I also photographed a family of 11 baby ducks in the same pool).

These are some of the big guns, of course, but I've found wonderful small gardens in places like Corpus Christi, Texas and Tucson, Arizona and I've even got a small but terrific rose garden in a park just up the street from where I live. Wikipedia has a great listing of gardens organized by state and odds are you'll find one that's within a short drive. Don't forget to check YouTube, also, you're sure to find lots of videos of formal gardens and botanical parks.

One other thing that I like about photographing in a botanical garden, by the way, is that they usually have a staff of gardeners who work continually to deadhead old blooms and weed the gardens so that you don't have to worry about a great shot being ruined by a few raggedy blossoms. Even better, you can ask the gardeners lots of questions about how they keep the gardens looking so nice.