Happy New Year friends !!
Diagrammed photo from Saxon Holt eBook on garden photography
Big doings. Monumental news in the world of garden photography. Picture This is back at Gardening Gone Wild !
Our group blog event / contest, started in 2009 catapulting our first winner, Pam Penick, to national stardom. 😉
The contest is known as a gateway to fame and fortune to all who enter.
Disclaimer: As a professional garden photographer I can assure all who enter that fortunes are not the monetary kind. And fame ? It’s a very small world…
Other winners are a who’s who of garden bloggers, but in order to get your name mentioned and get the valuable links, you will have to enter. Click to a sample list from first contest or see the 57 entries from our last contest.
OK, OK… What’s it all about and why bring it back now ? Wasn’t it a whole lot of work for the celebrity judges you brought in?
Glad you asked because Picture This photo contest fits quite nicely into my new venture in on-line publishing. After 5 years of writing here about a garden photography book and 3 years of promising an e-book was coming – its here.
I would be a real ignoramus if I did not connect with all the friends I have made here, many who have commented and encouraged my work. And running a photo contest on Gardening Gone Wild might even help spread the word about PhotoBotanic. 
Ya think?
So, before I go full-on promoting my new project, here’s the scoop on Picture This. Stay tuned. My next post here is Jan 24 and that will be the official entry time. The subject will be “Photos of 2014” and rules will be posted then. Go through last year’s photos. 
Spread the word.
All this is ploy for the announcement – you are hearing it here first: PhotoBotanic is launched. The first ebook is done. Each lesson is also available as individual iBooks from iTunes and Google Play.
PhotoBotanic has a Learning Center for members, with most of the stories available with free membership, while the Garden Photography Workshop section is subscription membership where lessons are “dripped” to members on a scheduled basis. It was a complicated set up, as are my reasons for having a membership site to begin with. As soon as I can, I will write a post there about the background and development of the site.
Example of member content on PhotoBotanic. Rule of Thirds in garden photography.
I do hope many of you will at least become free members and give me some feedback. Because it is a complicated site and I am just one guy (except for the webmeister), there are still many weak points and surely some typos. With any new venture there are going to be lots of loose ends and glitches. I almost gave up several times. I will appreciate any feedback from many of you here.
It will take me a year of adding more content and evaluating site traffic to know if this will be a success, but it is finally live and I can get back to the really fun part of being a garden photographer – learning about gardens, celebrating plants, taking photos, and sharing them with you. To celebrate, PhotoBotanic is putting on a workshop with a couple of my garden photography buddies – kindred spirits who take this craft quite seriously.
For this too, you here at Gardening Gone Wild are hearing it first. Our hints on our Facebook pages drew considerable buzz but this is the first public announcement because beginning today, Sat. Jan 10, tickets are available for the “Garden as Creative Source” event in Berkeley. For tickets and more info, go – where else – to PhotoBotanic Workshop Events.
The San Francisco Garden Show will have special premium tickets for the one hour workshops each of us is giving after our public seminars at the Show, and those tickets are not yet on-line. E-mail me at Workshops at PhotoBotanic and I will be sure to let you know when those tickets are available.
But if you ever wanted an excuse to come to the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show, to see the UC Botanical Gardens in spring, and learn garden photography from some masters – here is your excuse.
Whew. I have been busy. Did I mention my own saxonholt website is redesigned too ?
Enough about me. What about you ? Did you take any garden photos you would like to share in Gardening Gone Wild’s Picture This contest ? Get ’em ready in a blog post on your site and come back Jan. 24 for entry rules. Free e-book to the winner.
Happy New Year !
Latest posts by Saxon Holt (see all)
- The Green New Deal - November 19, 2018
- Leaning Pine Arboretum - January 31, 2018
- Landscape Panoramas 2017 - January 12, 2018
