Saxon Holt

Workshop Tips – Finding Photos

Symphyotrichum lateriflorum 'Lady in Black' Calico Aster (aka Aster lateriflorus Michaelmas Daisy) flowering in autumn mixed border at Denver Botanic Garden

For my recent garden photography workshop at the Denver Botanic Garden I used the theme Finding Photos.  By “finding photos” I ask students to consider the full frame of the camera to create composition within an overall scene that tells their story. It is all too common for any garden photographer, flush with excitement in[...]

The Wild Desert Garden

This past spring I witnessed the superbloom in the California deserts. It was a sensation. The superbloom began in late winter in the southern most deserts and progressed northward, a result of ample rain after five years of drought. I was particularly intrigued, and made two separate visits to the Sonoran Desert east of San[...]

Its Wild – Tree Bark Peeling

It’s summertime. It’s hot. Time to shed a little bit of clothing. In California, some of our finest native trees and shrubs strip down and shed their bark. It’s called exfoliation, and I swear it seems to happen overnight.  I have friends who say they have heard it.  I wonder if it’s like the sound[...]

Tallgrass Prairie Inspiration

I have wanted to go to the Tallgrass Prairies for many years. My very first successes as a nature photographer were documenting serpentine grasses in the Ring Mountain Nature Conservancy preserve in California. I have done two garden books featuring grasses, one on ornamental Grasses with Nancy Ondra who started Gardening Gone Wild with Fran so[...]

Magnolia soulangeana – Portrait Session

I was not planning a photo session when I went out to prune my Magnolia soulangeana. It seems to have been raining all winter in here in California, and I never found the time to get my winter pruning done.  By the time I got around to pruning, the magnolia was just beginning to flower. It[...]