New Black and White Plant Photos

June 28, 2021 Sarah Marino

I am continuing to work through my archive of unprocessed files and processed-but-never-finished-and-shared files. At each turn, it feels like the scope of the project grows, mostly because integrating new photos into existing portfolios means that I also need to spend time updating and revising formerly finished files since my tastes have changed significantly over the last few years. I am making slow progress in the right direction so I hope to have a lot of new photos to share as I plod along through my Lightroom catalog.

One of my recent projects focused on finishing some new black and white photos of plants. I added about twenty new photos to our website and then split up a single gallery into three galleries for more cohesive organization.

Sarah's Recent Black & White Photographs

February 1, 2021 Sarah Marino

I planned for this article to be a collection of my favorite black and white photos from 2020 but a few things intervened with that plan. Although I like all of the photos here and think they are worthy of including in my black and white photo collections, only a few feel like they will qualify as “favorites” as time goes on. I also found time to process some photos from previous years as well, broadening the collection a bit. So, below, you will find some recently taken and recently processed black and white photos, with a few stories about our travels during 2020. I hope you enjoy the photos and the stories - and I hope that 2021 is off to a good start for you, despite the complex circumstances of these times.

A Slice of Focus: Lessons for Photographing Plants Using Shallow Depth of Field

June 14, 2019 Sarah Marino

Below, you will find a snippet of this recent article published on the Nature Photographers Network - click here to read the full post >>>

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Photographing small subjects opens up a world of opportunity for nature photographers. By seeking out nature’s details, a photographer can explore a world of plants, patterns, textures, and abstract subjects that are often overlooked or seen in a less interesting way by the human eye. In this article, we will discuss one way of photographing small scenes: using shallow depth of field to render only a small part of your subject in focus. This article focuses on plants and leaves but you can use these lessons on any small subject you encounter in nature.

Use Shallow Depth of Field to Simplify and Create Abstractions

For many landscape photographers, embracing shallow depth of field and the out of focus elements that come with it can be a major shift in mentality. When photographing small subjects like plants or flowers, shallow depth of field can often transform a subject from the literal to the abstract. Generally, using greater depth of field renders a subject more literally with all of its details more obvious to the viewer. Shallow depth of field, on the other hand, often lends a more simple, dreamy, and abstract quality to a photo. Instead of photographing petals or stems or leaves, you are photographing lines and shapes. Additionally, the abstract renditions that can emerge make shallow depth of field an excellent simplifying technique when photographing a chaotic subject.

Read the rest of this article on the Nature Photographers Network >>>

Black & White Nature Photography Portfolio #3: Plants

March 14, 2017 Sarah Marino

A "hens and chicks" succulent plant at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

This is my third black and white nature photo portfolio that I will be sharing here on our blog. You can find the other three posts in this series here: 1) grand landscapes and 2) smaller scenes in nature (smaller slices of grand landscapes, intimate landscapes, and abstract views of natural subjects), and tips for creating better black and white photographs.

This post features black and white photos of plants, from both botanical gardens and wild settings. Wandering around while studying and photographing plants makes for a perfect day since plants are one of my favorite subjects. Plants tell an important part of the story of every landscape. And, they offer an endless array of shapes, patterns, and textures - qualities that can help create interesting black and white photographs. You can view all of these photos plus others, at a much larger size, in my Black + White: Plants portfolio.

Pac-Man at the Denver Botanic Gardens

January 18, 2014 Sarah Marino

We are very fortunate to have an excellent botanical garden here in Denver. With four distinct seasons, it offers great variety for photography year-round. Although you wouldn’t know it from the lack of macro photographs on my website, I really enjoy photographing nature’s small details and have been working developing a few portfolios of photographs from the garden across seasons and of the diverse displays of cultivated plants.

We headed to the garden on a very rainy day last fall and were treated to a long, enjoyable, and quite damp afternoon of photography. The rain helped saturate the colors and delicate droplets formed on many of the plants. I spent the most time that day at the lily pad pond. Even though the lily blossoms were still in bloom and looked lovely, I focused instead on the lily pad leaves. The little Pac-Man shapes provided a fun subject for photography, with the water droplets adding another element of interest to these plants. Here are a few favorites from that afternoon.