Camera Phones are Cameras: Look Both Ways

Articles: Camera Phones are Cameras: Look Both Ways

Contributor

Saxon Holt

Topics: Garden Futurist, Inspired Gardens and Design, PH Photo Tips

Pacific Horticulture’s monthly photo series by renowned garden photographer and Pacific Horticulture Board Member, Saxon Holt of PhotoBotanic and Summer-Dry

Spring 2025

Let’s continue with this garden photography series with a reminder, these tips work for all cameras – just because we are considering camera phones specifically, the fundamental concept is to treat your device as a camera. To capture a good photo, be intentional and look carefully; camera phones are cameras.

We finished the last tip, ‘Working the Scene’, with “Enjoy what you are seeing, work it, frame up photos, tell stories with your camera”. It is very satisfying to be holding a camera studying a beautiful garden; don’t leave it too quickly, find multiple photos. The camera gives you the opportunity to linger and enjoy.

A trick I have learned when I know there must be multiple photos of a beautiful garden scene is to walk past it and look back. The most obvious photo may not be the way you are experiencing the garden, so think of another way to take a picture. Make it your story.

As an example, as soon as I saw this scene, I knew I wanted a photo.

The walkway leading the eye through the garden, past the Canary Island date palm tree, Phoenix canariensis, with the path’s diagonal line punctuated with three terra cotta candle lanterns was a ready-made composition. It is a good photo showing how a palm tree can be incorporated into a garden’s design.

As soon as I felt pleased with myself for seeing it, I realized there must be another photo here, it’s a lovely setting. What other pictures are here? I blanked. I couldn’t think of anything else to do with it, it was already a good photo; then I remembered the trick: walk past and look back.

The setting! Looking back, I could see the wine country of the Douro Valley, Portugal past the garden; the entire experience of traveling was brought into the photo in a way the first photo could not do. The fan palm carries equal weight in both photos, but I am quite sure years from now I will think of the “good” photo as being the one that had the most emotional memory.

Looking both ways in a garden is also a useful trick to finding a more meaningful photo when you see a bench in a garden. I take this next example from the Point of View chapter in my e-book Think Like a Camera.

This is a lovely if obvious photo of a bench tucked within a garden room of an estate garden near Chicago. I say obvious because once you discover this secret garden and look into it from the entry path you can’t help but see this nice composition and the bench. If this month’s tip was about composition, instead of looking both ways, I would point out that a bench is always a focal point in a garden, and is a quite handy (and obvious) way of making a good composition. But for the sake of this lesson, note the little camera icon above the bench in the photo above.

Let’s go to that point in the garden and look back. (I will point out here there is another path back there and I did not have to trample through the plantings.)

This is the point of view from the bench looking out, a reminder that a bench is intended to be a viewing point. The designer did not simply intend it to be the subject of a photograph, as much as we photographers are grateful for that piece of hardscape as a focal point.

As we search for photographs a bench is an automatic clue to look both ways in a garden. But we don’t always have time to explore and look for these other angles. You may find yourself with your camera phone on a garden tour, or in a friends garden, being lead from one part to another. Take a moment to look back as you stroll the garden; you may find a more meaningful photo after you have walked through the space.

I began Camera Phones Are Cameras with this full disclosure: I have been a professional garden photographer for 40 years and do not take any of my professional photos with a camera phone. However, almost all the tips I give in my workshops apply to any camera, recognizing the camera is only a tool to capture an image.

It is up to you to take the picture, and if used with intention and consciousness any camera or camera phone can take wonderful pictures; especially if you learn a few techniques.