How to Photograph Gardens - Jason Ingram

In this episode of the Photography Pod, hosts Nick Church and Steve Vaughan chat with garden photographer Jason Ingram about his journey into photography, the challenges of capturing gardens, and the importance of light and weather in his work. Jason shares insights into the business side of garden photography, including working with garden designers and the role of stock photography. He also discusses his upcoming book, 'How to Photograph Gardens', and offers advice for aspiring photographers looking to enter this niche.

Key Takeaways:

• Weather plays a significant role in garden photography, often dictating when and how shoots can occur.
• The golden hour is crucial for capturing the best images of gardens.
• Most of Jason's work is commissioned by magazines and book publishers.
• He emphasizes the importance of building relationships with garden designers.
• Jason's photography often connects the garden to the food industry, showcasing the journey from garden to plate.
• He advises aspiring photographers to be prepared for early mornings and the challenges of the profession.
• Jason's book, 'How to Photograph Gardens', will be released on March 13th.

Nick Church and Steve Vaughan are professional wedding photographers based in the UK. They both use Sony Alpha cameras and lenses.

Nick's website : https://www.nickchurchphotography.co.uk/
Nick's Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/nickchurchphotography/

Steve's website : https://www.samandstevephotography.com/
Steve's Wedding Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/samandstevephotography/
Steve's personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevevaughanphotography

Any technical information given by the presenters is based on their understanding and opinion at the time of recording

Transcript

Nick Church: [00:00:00] So hello to you, the listener, and thank you for downloading this episode of The Photography Pod with me, Nick Church, and my good mate, Steve Vaughan. The Photography Pod brings you the world's most inspirational photographers, and we are joined by another great guest today this week, who is a garden photographer and author, Jason Ingram, and who we'll be meeting with shortly.

So it's a busy time of year for Steve and I. And I thought just for this week, it'd be quite good to just see a little bit behind the curtain of the photography pod. So Steve and I, yeah, well, strap in Steve. Oh my God, 

Steve Vaughan: what are you going to do? I don't know what he's going to do here. We didn't rehearse this.

So she probably can tell, 

Nick Church: Steve and I live a life full of excesses and luxury, the only excess luxury that come with being the two of the UK's youngest and most sought after. podcasters. So you might be surprised, but it's, it's not just about classy movie premieres for us and chauffeurs, [00:01:00] but like you listener, we can sometimes succumb to everyday excesses and temptations.

And in that vein, I'm saddened to let you know, it's quite shocking, but we both were banned this week from, we were forced to resign our membership for our private members club in Mayfair. And No. As a key part of the young social elite, you're probably wondering what possibly we could we have done to to force this to happen.

But in fact, there were two different offenses from both of us. So in so I mean, to just go through those in detail, I mean, Steve was criticized heavily From club members when during the chairman's new year's address, he was caught watching Aston Villa on his phone and that would have, that would have been fine.

But when Leon Bailey slotted away the 76 minute winner against Leicester, Steve put his. Dress shirt over his head, stormed around the drawing room, screaming, get in up yours, filthy Lester. Now this ballet completely derailed the chairman's [00:02:00] ceremonial opening of the champagne with his club sword. And he then took out a huge chunk of his finger.

And they say, This internet actually came after Steve was already on his last warning for no street photography in the members bar. Anyway Nick's offense is even more serious and it's following one too many port and lemons in the oyster bar He became aware of a senior member a senior member. He was a photography enthusiast And a listener to this podcast, showing off his new bridge camera to other members.

So when the members started bragging about the extraordinary zoom range in such a small package, Nick finally saw red and started an F and C laden barrage against the member talking about sensor sizes and the inability of this model, even to shoot raw files. So finally frustrated that none of the other members seem the least bit interested in Nick's talk about image noise.

He finally set fire to their top hats. And then was sick in the plate of oysters. So we've left this life behind. And actually we had an in person meetup yesterday, which had none [00:03:00] of these excesses. It was just Steve and I in my studio, nice cup of coffee and a sensible chat. So that was lovely. Wasn't it?

Steve? I 

Steve Vaughan: I'm just stunned by that last five minutes. Really? I don't know where that come from. You either been. I'm magic mushrooms or you've, you've found some bizarre meme of the internet. You decided to, I 

Nick Church: am on a particularly strong course of painkillers. It might be that. No, I'm not. I'm not. It's fine.

But that was nice to meet up in person. Wasn't it? It was great to meet. And I need to 

Steve Vaughan: apologize to, I guess he's probably wondering what the hell he's joined actually. Bear with us, Jason. But no, seriously, it was great to meet up. I was down in Bristol for a personal matter and it was great to pop in and see.

The vast studio that you have compared to my little cubby hole that I sit in here. This is a converted garage that I have to work from, and I can almost touch both walls from here. So you, you seem to have something the size of a football pitch for a studio, which is very, very nice. 

Nick Church: Well, at least it's tidy.

You did come at a good time. Cause I've finished the new year's carpets out. Yeah, there's, there's just the cupboard of doom left to go, but we're going to come onto that a bit later. [00:04:00] And what else have you been up to this week, Steve? 

Steve Vaughan: Apart from meeting you well, I mean, we're, we're actually, so this show will come out and I normally interview, this is actually the week after we recorded the last one.

So probably not much since we, we recorded the last one with with Christian really, but no, you know, usual stuff. So with my training business, I'm, I'm working on a couple of projects there and a couple of slide decks that I've got to deliver. I'm delivering a training course in Cambridge later this week with my.

You know, my corporate sales training, as you know, so I've got a pre wedding shoot to do tomorrow. And then our first wedding actually happens on the end of January, which I'm looking forward to actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Nick Church: It was similar. I've got my first wedding in a couple of weeks. This week I have been.

Well, I announced I did the news thing about the that I'll be at the photography show this, this, this year on the 10th and 11th of March at the XL in London. So looking forward to that, it's going to be a couple of sessions, one about what matters most to our clients. And the spoiler is that it's not what we think it is which we've talked about a lot on this podcast about things like image sharpness [00:05:00] and image noise and all those things that clients don't care a bit about.

Or, or certainly most clients don't. It's certainly our clients don't. I mean, sure. There, there are some clients that do for other genres. The other one is about like a photography myth buster about, so the, the classic example being that you'll see spread all over Facebook groups that you must never ship your rules.

And I think, well, until someone says, come here, I'll give you a thousand pounds for the rules and you say, well, absolutely, how do you want me to send them to you? Should I just drive them around? So. There's other stuff. We chat a little bit about a new training platform that I'll be creating this year.

So that's really exciting, but that that's all still early days for that. So anyway, yeah. So yeah, today we've got Jason Ingram who thanks very much, Jason. And so I, we, you're just down the road and you'd have thought that. It would be easy to come up in person to do this, but it's actually, there's, there's loads of technical difficulties doing it in person.

Steve and I will do a show in person at some point, but it is a lot, a bit tougher than, than doing it remotely. Jason, great to have 

Steve Vaughan: you here. Thank you. Yeah, really, really 

Nick Church: pleased for joining for. Thanks for joining us, Jason. So Jason studied [00:06:00] at Salisbury college. As I said, he's based in Bristol here in Bristol.

He's primarily, I think it's fair to say a gardens photographer, but has loads of other genres that he works on. And so yeah, so welcome to the pod, Jason. 

Jason Ingram: Well, thanks for having me guys. It's a really, really nice to be here and see you guys and see how you, how you operate this show as well, which is very interesting.

Steve Vaughan: Slick and seamless and polished. And I mean, that 

Jason Ingram: first five minutes, I'd have to digest that later. 

Nick Church: I will say that there's no point just doing something the same as everyone else.

Jason, do you want to give us like a potted sort of sort of history of your journey into photography and how you've got to where you are now? 

Jason Ingram: Yeah, well, I, I, as you, as you said, I studied at Salisbury College of Art finished many, many years ago, in fact, 1992 it was a editorial and advertising based at Salisbury.

So it was very much geared towards I would say, you know, quite commercial work, which is good certainly fitted. Fitted the work that I was kind of looking to [00:07:00] do, although I spent most of my time in the landscape out and about trying to sort of avoid being in the studio. So one of the very first jobs I had after finishing college was actually working for.

Postcard company, believe it or not. Yeah. Which is John Hind, John Hind. He's in fact, Martin Parr was fascinated by all the sort of early works of John Hind, things like the, the boring postcard books. Well, that was the kind of work that I was taking initially, these scenes. That I had to drive around the country and try and find pictures basically from existing postcards.

So I had a bag full of postcards shot sort of in the early sixties and I had to go to those exact spots and update them. So, so yeah, yeah, it was, it was quite, it was, it was interesting on many levels. And so they had these kind of basic. Photograph, postcards I had to obtain, and then something that was called the impression range, which was the sort of slightly more expensive postcard where I could actually [00:08:00] let go creatively and find sort of new scenes.

So, so sort of from there, I, I, it was like a, I suppose about I did that for about seven months then I headed off to Canada for about six or seven months stayed, I was, yeah, I was over in Montreal, so I did some assisting over there as well. I think our 

Nick Church: last, our last three guests you included, have had a link to Canada.

It did one sort. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason Ingram: Wasn't, wasn't your last guest actually Canadian? 

Nick Church: Yeah, he was Canadian. Yeah. Yeah, he was Canadian. That's good. Then came either born in the uk, I'll have to go back and listen. And then they moved Canada for his own life. And then Steve Gerard was from Yorkshire, I think, and then moved to Canada and now he was from Birmingham.

Okay. Oh, he's from the business. Yeah. 

Jason Ingram: Yeah. So, so, yeah, so I was there for quite a while, in fact, and in fact, I was assisting a a food photographer in Montreal for a short while and did a few other things, but then the main reason for going there was to do a trip [00:09:00] up to the very Northern parts, subarctic region of, of going to the Northwest territories in February time to take some landscape pictures up there.

So, so landscapes were always my driving force initially, but then when I came back to the UK and did, did sort of the usual route of assisting assisting lots of different photographers, mainly within the fields of advertising, shooting everything from food to interiors to cars, that kind of stuff. I, I obviously as an assistant, it's really important to kind of keep your.

Personal work going all the time. You, you, you know, your, your own book, keeping it up to date, constantly going out and sort of seeing people. Cause it was all, you know, letters and phone calls, that kind of side of things. And and garden photography was never really something I'd ever considered. It wasn't a, sort of an area of, of sort of professional, professional photography I thought even [00:10:00] existed.

And then I, I, I. kind of started doing a few things for the National Trust just for their library, and obtained access to to gardens in the UK. And that sort of Pushed me into that sort of area really. So I, I, I really loved the, the, the sort of area of work. So I, I, yeah, so, so that was the first, first ventures into it.

Steve Vaughan: Had you got a background at all in horticulture or gardening or were you a keen gardener even or? 

Jason Ingram: Yeah, keen gardener now and my wife's a gardening editor. So all right. Yeah. So, so, and we do books together as well. So so it's very much part of our life now, but initially. 

Nick Church: I suppose, I mean, is it, I suppose it's fair to say that a lot of, I can see the link between gardens and food photography because a lot of restaurants are more organics kind of producers of food.

That's a very important part of the process of where the, where the produce is coming from, isn't it? Their gardens that they're homegrown things. So do you, have you found that you're shooting a lot of gardens that [00:11:00] then spills into where that produce is ending up on the plate? 

Jason Ingram: Yeah, yeah, it does. That's because, I mean, I've had Very much so.

And, and, and that's, that's the kind of side of food that I've shot. So I, I've done a, quite a few cookbooks actually over the years. But those cookbooks have generally stemmed from I, I worked with an author called James Wong, who was who did a. BBC series actually called Grow Your Own Drugs many years ago.

I remember that, yeah. Yeah, and, and I did three books with him which were recipe based books, but they're very much stem, stem from growing, you know, the growing side of it. So, you know, fork to fork it if you like. So I, although I've, and I do shoot a fair amount of food editorially for, for, for publishing.

For books, but as I said, it's, it's all really stemmed from the garden work that I do. And that's, that's kind of the process of it, really. 

Nick Church: Let me share some of your your photos, Jason, if you don't mind. Let me, let's do that. 

Steve Vaughan: Where are we? [00:12:00] Just while Nick's doing that Jason. So what would a typical What would your typical job be then, a typical client, how, you know, who would be the sort of person that would book a garden photographer and pay for a garden photographer?

Jason Ingram: Well, I, I'm sort of, I mean, in, in lots of ways, it's I'm in a very an old school, there's James Wong there actually I'm in a very old school area because I, I still work pretty much to print, meaning that my, my clients are editorial clients which could either be a magazine or a publisher, a book publisher.

So most of my work comes in a commission form from, from the magazine, or I get commissioned to shoot a book I also work with landscape architects, garden designers which is another big part of my work. So it's, it's, it's very similar to how we're always told in college that you edit editorial work [00:13:00] in the fashion world has always led to bigger, bigger commissions, really.

So we all know that editorially, quite often the money hasn't been seen as to be as good as say advertising. But of course, the one thing that editorial gives you is exposure and profile. So, so it's when your work's being shown in really, really good high quality. top selling magazines. Of course, everyone's seeing that work.

And when you're when you start to get the phone calls from landscape architects and garden designers asking you to photograph their guns, of course, that's a that's a win win. Because quite often what happens then is that I get commissioned by a top designer. I photograph the garden. I get I obviously get a payment from, from that side of things, but also then part of the deal is also that ideally I'd like to have, not always, but ideally they like to have magazine exposure as [00:14:00] well.

So of course that means that, but it's, it's a very close group of, of people working in the industry. So everyone gets to know who works with who. So quite often, you know, magazine may. Call me up to say that we, we, we know you've been photographing Tom Stuart Smith's work or Pete Aldoff's work or whatever.

What, what do you have that you've shot recently that we could consider for the magazine? So I guess that, that, that's a, that's a sort of a situation where that can work you, you know, you get, you get double the money if you like. So, so it, it, it stems from that. So, but it's, it's, I'd say 85 percent of what I do is print based.

So not very much sort of online stuff, although saying that of course, magazines now have to have a, an online presence as well. So video creeps into my work a little bit as well. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I 

Nick Church: think often the case I see the, the Jason, you've got you do sell artworks like wall art as well.

Jason Ingram: Yeah, a very small [00:15:00] amount. I do, I, I, I do sell I, I often get not often, but I, I have been. In the past asked to supply work for sort of venues, hospitals. Also I've been asked to do a couple of things for some banks as well. So I, I get asked to sort of create stuff to put together for, for these places, but also I sell through Saatchi as well, which is again, it's, it's literally they, they look after it all.

So I'm not always entirely sure how well it does, but I, I, I do. Still like to, I'd love to be able to sell more work in print form, really. But it's lovely, lovely 

Nick Church: work. I looked at Versace, your stuff on Cece, and I'm, I'm far from a horticulturalist or gardener, but I know a, I know a beautiful snow drop when I see one and there's some really lovely ones on there, there, 

Jason Ingram: yeah, there's some nice, yeah, there are some nice snow drops on there actually.

And but I, I mean, when, when I was at college, I used to have a a standing covent garden selling first. Oh wow. Sort of. early 90s. So and people weren't [00:16:00] really buying photographs in the same way as they are now, I would say. But so I've always, I've always, I mean, it'd be lovely. I mean, I'd love to sort of be in a situation where I could do, as I said, could do more of that, really.

But it's just not. Yeah, I think 

Nick Church: now it's, it's the same for any landscape photographers that we've had on the pod. And it's the same world over that, that you all would typically, landscape tour would augment that with training tours and other things. They would love just to do the, the artwork and, and wall art and things, but 

Steve Vaughan: yes, the sums down.

I don't present. So there's one thing that does spring into my mind and comparing yourself with the sort of the last two guests we've had on, you know, from the out and out food photography and, and, you know, a lot of their work is. Very controlled studio based, you know, everything's under the control of the lighting, the positioning, everything.

Now you've got a, an element and I use that word advisedly that is out of your control and that's the great British weather. So I wonder how that impacts your work, [00:17:00] particularly, you know, if you've got a big shoot planned and the forecast is going to be a glorious summer's day and it pees you down with rain all day.

How, how do you work around that? 

Jason Ingram: It's, it's, it's, it's the, I mean, God knows why I ever decided that this would be the best place to do it, because I'll tell you what, it's really, really hard and, and anyone that shoots gardens will tell you the same thing that we're probably, we're, we're a nation of garden lovers, yet we have the conditions.

that make a job as a garden photographer extremely hard. So, I suppose, in a nutshell, what we have to do is because one of the things that's really, and I mention this in the book that I've just written, which is House Photograph Gardens, and it is very much about, Timing how you work because it's called the golden hour for a reason.

It lasts for about an hour. I mean, it's as simple as that. And that is the time when you can really get those amazing, beautiful, wider opening shots. The shots that [00:18:00] the magazine, when they commission you to go and shoot a garden, they will be reliant on you producing an image that will. Say as much about the garden in one shot that has to be taken in the most incredible light Which is normally a double page spread of DPS.

So those those those kind of shots you can only Obtain in those in in perfect condition and if it's not perfect conditions, then you sort of have to go back and back again so when you really delve into our conditions and our weather forecasts It's quite amazing. You don't generally have, I mean, we all think, you know, you like last summer as a classic example, we'll think, we'll think back to last summer.

It was terrible. The weather was awful, but it wasn't. I mean, I mean, generally it wasn't 

Steve Vaughan: the weddings. I was photographing. Yeah. Well, there you go. So you've got, well, you, 

Jason Ingram: you, the thing is you guys go rain or shine. Don't you? It's as simple as that. Yeah. I mean, I have. I have a book of shoots that I go into the [00:19:00] season with.

So, I mean, when I say the season, of course I'm shooting now and last week. It's a classic example. We've had the best winter I've known for a very, very long time. This is because of the frost because of the frost. We had, you know, we had literally a week of minus two, minus three conditions almost everywhere in the country.

And and you know, you always have a book of things that need to be shot for magazines, stuff that you need to add to a book, a seasonal way. And of course the only conditions you can really have for those shoots is frosty. Those kind of conditions. And when you get them in the winter, it's, it's wonderful because you can shoot almost all day long, which obviously the days are much shorter, but the sun rises, rises later sets earlier.

So you lit your window shooting is much, much longer than it would be in the summer months. Whereas in summer months, I have. Quite a few different elements to my work. So, I mean, I do, although I shoot what I would say would be a garden feature or a [00:20:00] beautiful garden feature, I also shoot things like plant profiles.

So that will be a collection of going to a specialist grower that grows. You know, I don't know, loads and loads of different varieties of roses or loads on those different varieties of lavender, whatever, which of course, these are the kind of shots that I can take in all sorts of conditions because I can control it because it is a much, much smaller shot.

So, so, so as long as I I've planned where I, I can be and, and all my clients have helped as well and said, you know, we want you to photograph X, Y, and Z this June. Another person said, so I'll have a big spreadsheet of all the shoots that I need to obtain over that season where they are in the country and then attached to that, I'd also have an idea of what the weather's doing and where, because I mean, I, I do a lot for a couple of designers in Southeast England in, in sort of Sussex and into Kent.

And of course the [00:21:00] weather is often much, much better there than it is. Certainly over in, in sort of the, the, the West Bristol area of Wales. Yeah, exactly. Well, there's a reason it's so green. Yeah, absolutely. So, so I mean, it, it, it, I'm, I'm fairly, I'm very organized and, and, you know, I've always enjoyed that.

That sort of organized side of my work and, and again, the same with, you know, shooting for libraries because I, I still shoot stock pictures for libraries because one's got to ask about that. Okay. Well, it's really interesting because I've heard it. I think I may have even heard it on your podcast before.

And, and, and I certainly heard it on many others that people don't believe that it still exists. That. You know, you can, you can earn money from taking stock photography, which of course, generic stock photography has been lost and was lost many, many years ago to the likes of Alamy and Getty and whatever else.

And, and, you know, things like. AI creeping into our world now, but [00:22:00] when you've got gardening magazines and gardening books published on specific gardening material, they want to know that they can get the exact. Thing that they want. So they don't just want a picture of a rose. They want a very, very specific picture of a rose.

A particular, yeah, particular species, particular cultivar. So of course, one of the other things that I have to do is when I shoot, I have to be able to put in metadata and caption, caption the work as well. And then of course, then once. That's back with me after it's been published in a magazine. I then filter that into the gap photos, which is a garden and plant photography agency.

And they, and they sell worldwide and yeah, unfortunately they're, they're, I mean, they, they do have competition with the likes of Alamy, but you know, as I said, When a client goes to them, they know that they are going to get exactly the picture they want for the shoot. That's interesting that 

Nick Church: you'd even, that [00:23:00] that's even defined as stock photography to me, because I always see stock photography as a bit more of an incidental tool to, to augment.

An article or a book rather than, whereas what you're talking about is almost more like product photography, just a library of products that just happened to be plants. You know, they're all, they're all really nicely shot and, and their catalog catalogs and everything else. Yeah, I'd not, it not occurred to me that, that stock photography can elevate into sort of high end, good quality photography as well as, you know, just, you know, sort of.

Everyday things that people might put alongside a blog post or, or, or news article. 

Jason Ingram: Well, I mean, I think the thing is with well, I say magazines, it's probably more than that. I mean, I get, I get, when I get my sales statements through, I, I see sales statements from everything from, from traditional magazine publishers to nurseries as well.

Nurseries that are selling stuff online. You know, all sorts of online horticultural companies are [00:24:00] all seeking seeking pictures. I mean, in lots of ways, photography is used way, way more than I ever remembered it. Certainly when I was First, in the world of photography, I mean, it's everywhere now, isn't it?

And, you know, because, because of the online presence, if people are selling something, you need to be able to see it, you just need to be able to see it. But interestingly, one of the things that started to creep up quite a bit is we've get we get copyright claim fee now as well. Which is really, well, it's a very interesting one because what's happening is people are just stealing pictures.

Simple as that, you know, they're, they're putting into Google, they're putting in what they want to find. Of course, your picture might come up, they grab the picture and then they use it on their. Facebook page for selling, or they 

Nick Church: create a, create a slideshow for a 

Jason Ingram: podcast. Podcast. Done . Or they, but they, you know, they [00:25:00] are selling off it Or you, you, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've had all sorts of things from the, the agency.

So the agency, every month the agency will send me a, a. Several emails saying, did you license this picture and send me a link to where my pictures being used and I get, I'm getting absolutely hundreds of them at the moment. I haven't seen any returns yet, but I am seeing hundreds of them and they, they've got a piece of software that they can basically put in their entire, I mean, they've got millions of pictures in their library and I don't know what software they're using, but they're using something and they're putting it into Google and it's coming back where those pictures being used.

So that's 

Steve Vaughan: yeah. Just because he's on the internet doesn't mean it's free. 

Jason Ingram: No, well, I mean, I mean, that's a whole nother podcast for you guys, I'm sure. Yeah, it is. I mean, it, I mean, it really is because, I mean, I, I think as in that respect, photography has sort of partly been devalued for that really. Yeah, completely.

Yeah. And we get the same. Challenges in the wedding industry as well. I'm sure you do. Cause I mean, do you, I mean, you know, do [00:26:00] you have, do they, do your clients have restrictions on, 

Steve Vaughan: It's more venues. So I was only speaking to Nick yesterday. I had a bit of a fallout with a venue only this week where they're, they want to use some of our pictures for free, which is fine, but aren't happy to recommend us as one of their recommended suppliers.

So I've said no, because they're not free. We can, we can trade, but it's not free, you know? So, but anyway, that's another. Another topic. So, so you've got a book coming out how to photograph gardens. I mean, we'll link to that in the show notes and I'll be one of your first customers. No, there it is. There it is.

Cause my wife would love that book. And 

Nick Church: that's available for pre order on Amazon. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Without 

Steve Vaughan: wishing to give away anything that's in the book, just looking at your photographs in the gorgeous images and I can see the sort of the golden hour impact in lots of those as well. A lot of the photos look like they're taking in sort of quite, quite wide aperture lenses, very shallow depth of field.

Is that a stylistic approach? No, I 

Jason Ingram: mean, actually I'm, I'm not, I'm not a big, [00:27:00] funny, I didn't, I didn't go into that earlier when we were chatting, but I don't, it's not really. It, it may give you that feel that, that, that, that's happening, but quite a lot of the shots will be, you know, sharp front to back as well.

I mean, it depends on what the, I don't, I'm not, I'm not a wide shooter. Okay. So what kind 

Steve Vaughan: of gear would you typically use then? In terms of, I 

Jason Ingram: mean, I, I'm a Nikon shooter, so Z9 which has been. An interesting journey. I've always used Nikon and I use phase as well. I use a phase IQ 160. Lovely, lovely camera when it, when it works.

That's the problem with phase. I mean, it's a great studio camera. I've had it for a few years now. It's a CCD sensor, which I, for anyone that's interested is To this day, the best sense that was ever made, in my opinion, for color. I mean, again, most unusable thing, really, the, the, the phase system. But it has a certain [00:28:00] quality to it and when it works, it's absolutely beautiful.

And, and. If you know, you know, and that's all I can say, because I know other people that have experienced the CCD sensors of those early, early medium format backs. And they all say the same thing. But when it doesn't want to work, it would just stop working. And you're stuck. You don't have a spare. It's I mean, when you're I mean, I bought the first my first Phase in whenever it's 2012, I think, and you know, you're almost remortgaging your house to buy these things.

I mean, they're expensive and it's not something that you carry a spare. So over the, over the years I've, I've used it less and less. I mean, it's still, it does appear in the book occasionally, but most of the time I'm shooting on the Nikon Z9, very recently moved from the D850. How 

Steve Vaughan: do 

Jason Ingram: you 

Steve Vaughan: feel 

Jason Ingram: moving to the dark side of the mirrorless?

Oh, I don't, I mean, I mean, I'm getting used to it. I still, I, I'm not a fan [00:29:00] of looking through a you know, electronic viewfinder. I find it, I do find it still jarring. You know, you, you get used to the way you, I mean, I'm sure you guys are the same, certainly with your wedding stuff. I mean, you really start to get to know.

Where those buttons are, don't you? Because you're working quickly. Most of the time. Yeah, I mean, you know, I mean, you're working far quicker than I am, but you just get used to how things And when you look through a, an optical viewfinder, the experience is much, much nicer than looking through an electronic viewfinder.

And I get it for, again, I get it for the, the work where you're like a wedding is another classic example. You know, you're seeing what you're getting and that you can't go back and do it again, that's the thing. No, that has to be a really, really a huge benefit, but I mean, it's great. I mean, I, I've. You know, it's a, it's a good system.

I use I use a collection of primes. The primes, I use a, like 51.4. I [00:30:00] use an 85, 1 0.4. I use a macro, 60 millimeter 2.8, then a macro 1 0 5. Mm-hmm . And then I use, for the bulk of the work, I use a 24 to 70. Which is just the standard 2.8. The workhorse, yeah. Z lens. And then the same I use, so I've got the 24 70 and I use the 70 to 200 as well.

So, so, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm very much treating the, the wider shots that I take as, as landscapes in effect. So they do tend, I can see that approach, you know, all on, all on tripod. Well, you know, four 30 in the morning, the light levels are always very, very low. So I, I. You know, it's not unusual to be shooting at, you know, a second, a second and a half, two seconds at.

Say F 16 or something, I'm, I'm certainly don't touch on any of this sort of photo stacking or anything like that. So I, I, I like everything to be as, as natural to, to what I'm experiencing and seeing as possible. And I still use [00:31:00] graduated neutral density filters. 

Nick Church: No, do you? Yeah, which is really, 

Jason Ingram: and there's quite a lot of that in the book, which is really, which I mean, I, I meet, I meet BBC camera.

Men on, on, and women on the, with the, with the BBC, with some of the stuff that I do for gardeners world. And they're, they're still very much into they always laugh when I pop out the sort of neutral density graduated field because they're still using them. Well, yeah. They're 

Nick Church: into their cameras, I guess, aren't they?

Yeah. 

Jason Ingram: Yeah. Well, they have to, don't they? But I mean, I, I, I do find that I've, I have played with you know, shooting for the sky, shooting for the foreground, all that kind of stuff. But it just, it's very different. It's just I can, I, I, for the way I work, I just love to be able to, to put it through over the, over the lens.

And, and I 

Nick Church: think anytime where you've got, in any situation where you have a bit of time to think about. Getting that shot, like it's landscape and it doesn't need to be rapid an hour, but if you've got five minutes just to sit [00:32:00] down and make sure that horizons or the grad parts direct directly where you want it.

I thought, I'm sure there's no better way to do it. I mean, I believe 

Steve Vaughan: in getting it right in the camera rather than it's just you can sort it out to Photoshop or something. Yeah. Yeah. Me too. But you know, 

Nick Church: for, for things like, like Steve and I would do at weddings then, and I do the digital equivalent quite often, if I'm shooting a wedding venue or, or a property that I'm shooting, I'll always be bracketing and then, and then treating, you know, treating the sky differently.

But, but yeah, it would be great to have that time. That's not where you're not, where time isn't so pressured. To be able to sort of sit down and get that right. 

Jason Ingram: Yeah. Cause I do find that, you know, there are, there are always issues with using grants, obviously if there's a building in the picture or there's, there's a skyline or cause you know, I, I, all the gardens I shoot in various different places, both countryside wild, as well as you know, urban landscapes as well.

And, and I will still use it, but [00:33:00] the, the. the part of processing that I find that I tend to use rather than still doing the combination of the two pictures. So what I end up doing is kind of feathering in to the actual components that I, I go over, if you like, because occasionally what you will do, if I'm using something like a two stop neutral density grad and I, and it's touching the roof, you know, the apex of a roof that will become quite dark as well.

So what I tend to do is I selectively go in and. And reduce that and sort of by I I I'm very good at sort of trying to pair those things up because I, I, I, I haven't said, but I worked as a color printer for three and a half years. Oh, right. Okay. So when I first, I was in Bristol working at a studio, so, so one of the things I found that.

Working as a hand printer really honed my, my color skills, really. So 

Nick Church: I was going to say this about your, your photos, Jason, that the, I can see there's a lot of [00:34:00] attention gone into the tone and it's not, you know, it's not really contrasty, but it's got plenty of punch there and it's just really accurate, natural, 

Steve Vaughan: you 

Nick Church: know, it just looks like you are looking at.

Of the window into beautiful garden. I think that's, and I was going to ask if that's an intentional thing, or is it just been the result of experience? 

Jason Ingram: Yeah, I think it's been, it is, it's, it's certainly intentional that it, it's as close. I mean, it's, it, it's a difficult thing to say, isn't it? Because when I look at the, I don't, I mean, they're not always exactly what you're seeing.

Cause I mean, I, I do add a few extra things to it, but as you know, it's that thing that our brain works in such a way that it fills in all the details, doesn't it? And we all know that. It's the brain's filling in the details, but of course, when we take the files and put it onto the camera, you, you need to bring that back to what we, what you were seeing at the time, but the one, the one thing that's absolutely fundamental to all, all my [00:35:00] work.

And I try and make it that the key is light. I mean, because as, as you, you said earlier that, you know, I can't. I can control the light, but certainly with the, the wide shots, I'm reliant on daylight doing its thing. So, so I really, really need to sort of. I mean, that's, that's the skill that I think I can definitely see, see that, 

Nick Church: see that throughout your portfolio of and I had a a client in for training that last week actually, and he was thinking about how to practice.

She was going through manual mode and that kind of thing. And we were talking about that. Just get into your garden is a really good place to take, to take photos, just in practice without the pressure of being on top of a hill somewhere and just getting there. And I was explaining to her that you're.

She, she saw in our garden, like a little flower and it was just in terrible light. I said, you're better off getting a picture of a stinging nettle backlit sun. 

Steve Vaughan: Yeah. 

Nick Church: Then a beautiful lily that's just in some horrible shade. And yeah, completely. 

Steve Vaughan: Yeah. What's the most unusual [00:36:00] garden you've been asked to photograph Jason?

Gosh, most unusual. No, shoot generally, but perhaps, you know, with a garden. 

Jason Ingram: I, I've had some, I mean, I've, I've, I mean, suppose a most unusual, I suppose one of the most unusual gardens actually is unusual for its context of where it is. So I, I've recently finished a book with a Swedish landscape architect, Rolf Norfell, and we worked to get, in fact, I initially met him because I was commissioned by Gardens Illustrated Magazine to go and shoot his garden.

And now his gardens in Sweden, but it's not. Just in Sweden. It's way up in Sweden. Oh, right. So it's, and I, yeah, I mean, no, I mean, it's Stockholm. Then it's Umeå, then it's a sort of three hour drive and he's practically in the Arctic circle. Now Ulf is a, it's. A wonderful, fantastic designer. He's done Chelsea flower show several times and, and he's obtained gold medals, et cetera.

He's a really [00:37:00] worldwide known brilliant designer and his, he's got a place in Stockholm, but also his, his sort of home is in a place called Agnes, which is right up in this kind of Northern tip of Sweden. And. I had to go and photograph it in, said it was May, so it was post Chelsea, actually. So it was the end of May.

And so I did the journey, journey up there. And of course, people garden in Sweden, but they weren't gardening like he gardens. I mean, he literally had components of his Chelsea gardens that he'd previously done that he'd literally put. In this place in the practically of the arctic region of Sweden.

So he is got this woodland with this immaculate garden in, in the middle of nowhere with this huge torrent of a river that runs past it. Incredible. And of course I only had two days, but you've got 24 hour light. I was gonna say that can't be. It's gonna be So that, that was the, that was the thing That's probably the most [00:38:00] unusual, garden, I photograph based on just, it was just remarkable. If you're 

Nick Church: working with a garden designer, Jason, how much input do they have into that, into the way that your photos are captured of that garden? 

Jason Ingram: Well, I mean, their input is the fact they've made the garden. That's, that's where it, I mean, I would say, I mean, say that that's where it starts.

And that's where it ends. Probably wrong to say, but I mean. I think the thing is you becomes a working relationship with designers because they have to, I always think that micromanaging is probably the worst thing you could do in a creative situation. I think it's really, really important that you. Get allowed to do the job that they've commissioned you to do.

There are obviously many, many times where I get I actually shoot a garden. I've got designers with me and, and some designers really love the experience of, of being with me at sunrise and, and [00:39:00] not because what, what, one of the things about the work that I do, because I have to work so quickly, I'm sure you guys know when, when you get your eye into something, you, you get.

quite absorbed by something and you, I have to concentrate very, you know, great deal in order to get all that workshop in such a short space of time. So the last thing I want to be doing is responding to a question about, I don't know, where are you going on your holidays this year or something, but you know, you, you, you've got to keep small chat away because it's a distraction, but then I do, I, you know, I, I.

I do work with people that just come with me occasionally and they will literally just be absorbed by it and flow around the garden with me, leave me and we'll be in complete silence. They're being joined the moment I'll be doing my job because they're seeing their work at that time in the morning, which is really important for them.

It's a bit like a, you know, a chef. Walking through a restaurant, watching people eat their food. It there's, [00:40:00] there's something about an allergy, isn't it? Yeah. And I think, I think for a designer, I mean, there's, there's a couple that I've worked with recently, Marion Boswell and Charlotte Sanderson, and they're two people that last year they, they like, they like to come and join me.

And I, I, that's absolutely fine, but their involvement with what I'm actually shooting. It's not a great deal. I mean, I might get prompts before if it's a garden that I've never seen before. And a designer saying specifically, they want certain things to just, just remember, don't forget, I do want to have some records of a certain part of the garden just to make sure.

So I have a. Not just like a, a wedding crib sheet really, where you might have an auntie, a very quiet auntie that you know that they're going to just sit in the corner all the time, unless you go over and say, look, they really want a picture of you. Otherwise they're just going to go on. They say, we 

Steve Vaughan: see that as a personal challenge when they suddenly says, Oh, they don't like having the photograph taken.

Right. So one last question for me, then I'll shut up, [00:41:00] Nick, and I'll let you wrap up. But well, I mean, first of all, it's been fascinating talking to you, Jason, but I think you were saying before we started recording, there's about 150 recognized Gardner photographers or so in the UK, something like that.

Jason Ingram: Yeah, I mean, that's probably I don't actually know what I know at one one stage. I was told it probably was about that. But we do have a professional organization. We have a we have two things. We have a the Garden Media Guild, which is a guild that looks after photographers, filmmakers content creators, writers but as part of the Garden Media Guild, we also have a thing called the PGPA, which is the Professional Garden Photographers Association.

So we do, which is a vetted. Organization when, so you apply, you have to join the garden media guild. And then if you want, if you're a professional photographer or wanting to be, you can sort of apply to the PGPA as well. So I guess 

Steve Vaughan: that's where the question was going to be is if, you know, if I was thinking about wanting to become a garden photographer.[00:42:00] 

What recommendations would you, would you make to that person? 

Jason Ingram: Well, I mean, that, that, I mean, well, I mean, firstly, I mean, there's the recommendations that you've really got to make sure that it's the, an area of work that. You're prepared to get up early. Yeah. It's as simple as that. I mean, I mean, it's such an important part of the work because, unlike, say, landscape photographers, most landscape photographers always tell you, Oh, we can't stand July and August.

It's the worst time because the lights are pouring and, you know, all that kind of stuff. They're dead right. It's the hardest time of the year for the light. But of course, gardens are always at their best. Peak as a rule, they're at their peak in May, in June, July. Most people prefer to a late, a late summer garden September because of course the light's softer, but you re I mean, I need to be, I need to be in a garden at quarter past four in the morning in June, ready to shoot at half or quarter to five.

[00:43:00] So, and if it's a, if it's a hundred, 200 mile journey, that means, you know, quite often that I'm shooting early morning, late evening, and then. Trying to get some rest during the day as well. So I think that those are the things that, you know, if someone really wants to venture into garden photography, seriously you really need to consider, consider those elements to it really, because it's a, but then at the same time, it's a, you know, it's a great genre of work.

I mean, I, you know, I, I absolutely love it. It's, it's fantastic. 

Nick Church: And some of these, these planning aspects, are they in your latest book? 

Jason Ingram: Yeah, they are. Yeah, all that. I go into planning. Because sometimes people, another thing that certainly because I do courses as well, you know, workshops occasionally for various companies.

And one of the things that they always I always have to kind of try and share is, if you don't have a garden or you only have a small garden, how do I gain access to other gardens? [00:44:00] Because I mean, I was in exactly that same situation when I started, if it wasn't for the fact that I I applied to work as an agency photographer for the National Trust.

I wasn't, you know, I wasn't getting access to these gardens, but there's things like the yellow book, which is called the National Garden Scheme, which is a charitable organization, which People open, I'm sure you probably know about it. Mm. People open their gardens on a Sunday afternoon and it's a big thing in the UK for sure.

In fact, yeah, they do it here. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's a great 

Nick Church: tip. Yeah. 

Jason Ingram: Yeah. And what, what pe what you can do is you can, you can write to the National Garden scheme and, and say that you are, you know, a King Gun photographer and in return for you offering them work for free. 'cause you do need to do that.

Or for their promotions. But it, what it does is it then gives you access to a garden that you, between you and the owners, they are happy for you to say place in a magazine afterwards or place in a stock library. But in return for [00:45:00] all that the NGS, the National Garden Scheme will get some pitches that they can use for their promotions.

So it, it's a win win situation. And certainly when I first started my career as a garden photographer, that's, that's exactly what I did. That's great advice. I just get all, I just get all the Gardens from the NGS and then give them a section at the end of the year and then so it's 

Nick Church: the equivalent For a portrait photographer that might be working with models on a sort of photos for time.

Jason Ingram: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It's like testing. Yeah. Like exactly. Like for like, really. That's right. 

Steve Vaughan: Fantastic. 

Nick Church: Yeah. And remind us the name, sorry, Stephen, remind What's the book called? It's how 

Jason Ingram: to 

Nick Church: photograph 

Jason Ingram: gardens, 

Nick Church: right? So that, so that is it. And it's published 

Jason Ingram: by published by octopus. And it comes out Ilex, sorry, Ilex which is part of octopus publishing and it comes out on that's the back cover as well.

Comes out on March the 13th. Okay, so 

Steve Vaughan: we'll [00:46:00] definitely put it in the show so people know where to buy it, Jason. 

Nick Church: And people can pre order that now on Amazon. So yeah, thanks so much, Jason. That's, that's been fascinating. It's not often that, that we talk to a guest where I have no preconception about what, what their genre of works like.

And so that's been really interesting. It has, 

Steve Vaughan: it's fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. Good, good. Thank you for having me. I just want to pick up on something you said, actually. Well, you know, we just did a little bit of a techie session for 10 minutes, but. You said about the CCD sensor of your face one and it just reminded me.

So I had an elderly relative that died about four years ago. He was an uncle by remarriage, but was a keen photographer. And I inherited his camera and it's been sitting up on my shelf upstairs. And I, only the day I saw it, I thought I would have to dig it out. So it's a Nikon D 50, 

Jason Ingram: which was a 

Steve Vaughan: very early, you know, Nikon DSLR consumer camera, really, but that has a CCD sensor.

I know. And and again, for the listener, if you're not familiar with this, there is a school of thought that CCD sensors, which are pretty much, [00:47:00] you know, phased out now, I think really had a nicer, more filmic look to them than the sort of CMOS sensors that you have in modern cameras, really. And I can't even begin to get into the technology.

So isn't 

Nick Church: there something about the, the global shutter sensor technology that's. More like a ccd know about that. 

Steve Vaughan: I don't know. It could well be the challenge with this camera is A, it's six megapixels. That's not a lot. B, you can only use a two gigabyte SD card maximum. Oh, gosh. I mean, that's 

Jason Ingram: really, I mean, I think my, well, all of our, I presume all of our first digital cameras were probably at least.

CCD, weren't there? Yeah, I might struggle to 

Steve Vaughan: find an SD card that will fit it. But I was thinking I might just take it out on the streets and just see what I get with it, really. Yeah, 

Jason Ingram: well, the first, the first 35 millimeter digital camera I had was actually a, a Kodak. I can't even remember what it was called.

Yeah, they were one of the first ones, weren't they? Pro. They did two, they did the, I think it was probably the pro 14 C and the pro 14 N or something. And they did one for Canon and one for Nikon, I think it was 11 [00:48:00] megapixels. But of course what this was, I think probably one of the reasons why Nikon lost a lot of sort of loyal shooters when they first produced this thing.

Because. It worked for Canon, but for Nikon, because I think it's due to the, the, oh, sorry, due to the opening of where the lens goes on, it's a bit smaller for a Nikon camera. So of course it wasn't getting, getting the, the spread onto the sensor. So what ended up actually happening was that something like, I don't know, three and a half, 4 percent of the entirety of your edge was all cloned information.

So you, you ended up with this, this file that became even smaller because you had to crop into everything because it was just, just unusable, just unusable. But yeah, there, there is a whole array of people that really waxed lyrical. Lyrically about the CCD sensor and some of the early kind of like a CCD sensors as well Yeah, [00:49:00] I 

Steve Vaughan: read that as well.

Yeah, 

Jason Ingram: but they are a new day. They are really really I mean, I mean my my first phase which is p45 plus was Beautiful thing, but I mean if I took it over a hundred ISO the grain was you know, well grains of salt The noise, it was just unusable. Some of the 

Steve Vaughan: wedding venues that we photograph in. That'd be fun.

Oh gosh. I couldn't, yeah, 

Jason Ingram: and of course one focus point as well, right in the center. And then trying to, and then all sorts of things, I mean, back focus problems with it, but but as I said, I've said it earlier, but once it had a sweet spot and if you hit it. You would kind of really, really, yeah, every 15th shot you'd, you'd win, but otherwise 

Nick Church: that's better than my normal hit rate.

Jason Ingram: That's pretty good. So as we started the show in 

Steve Vaughan: a really strange vein, I'm going to sort of wind things up in a similar vein as well by saying that Nick is now [00:50:00] a. Published pop star. That's right. So, so you can queue for autographs now. Yeah. So tell, tell the dear listener about your Yeah, 

Nick Church: my latest single, which is called fearless is was released on Spotify Tidal and Apple music just for Christmas.

The artist's name isn't Nick Church. It's Farthest North. So that's how you can find, find that. Farthest North and you live in Bristol. Jason will know where I'm coming from on this. So it's my interest in Northwest passage and exploration in the 20th century. So yeah yeah, so that's just, I've loved doing that and I'll be doing some more of that this year.

So yeah, do, do check it out. It's, it's 

Steve Vaughan: a great track. Yeah. I would like, and, and Jason, you're saying that you, you're using a drum mic to talk to us right now? Yeah. Yeah. So you're obviously a drummer. 

Jason Ingram: Yeah. My, my old snare snare mic, the SM 57 . Wow. I feel left, which is I'm 37 I think, isn't it? Yeah, no, I, I, yeah, I used to be in a, a band in Bristol many years ago, but wow.

Great. [00:51:00] I, I, I still play a bit, but not, you know, not 

Nick Church: not, perhaps we join forces, Jason. Yeah, absolutely. I can, Seely, you should do. 

Steve Vaughan: I can play the fool. 

Nick Church: I'm good at that. You're the vocalist, 

Steve Vaughan: aren't you Steve as well? Yeah, I've been known to do the old karaoke, yeah. Oh, there you go. 

Nick Church: So, just one more reminder about the Facebook group.

We mentioned this last week, and we talked about a photo, don't want to call it a competition necessarily, but just an exercise where people can get. Involved and collaborate a bit. And so what we're going to do we're going to start putting in a theme into the Facebook group and people can share their photos.

That that broadly matched that theme where we're not going to police it. We're not going to be chucking loads of time into it, but it'd be lovely to see the the members of the groups work. So the first thing is going to be winter. Which I think is a really varied thing. So it could be a wedding, can be a landscape, could be a garden, could be anything.

Go out and take some pictures now, you know. So we'll, we'll put a thread in [00:52:00] there and then we'll put a post and then people just add their photo to that. And then what we're going to do is we'll go through a few of those. In the next episode, the ones that, one that sort of just, you know, floats our boat the most, they'll, they'll get a little gift from my cupboard of doom in the corner there.

So that could be anything from a filter to an SD card to a memory stick or, or something of that nature. No, not that corner. No way. 

Jason Ingram: Okay. 

Steve Vaughan: So just to define some rules. And so we're the judges. So I do. This isn't his final. And we let it run off for a couple of weeks or for a month. Yeah. I think 

Nick Church: if we, if we do it a couple of weeks and then that should hopefully fall in line with the cadence of the release of the pod.

And it's, it's like, yeah, it's really easy, nice and light. No, you know, and we're not saying that this is technically the best photo. It's just one that we thought that's, that's kind of, you know, that's an interesting photo. But what would be good is that any of that gets [00:53:00] submitted, we'll go through and, you know, we'll just show them on the pod and who took them.

Just cause you know, it's a, it's just a nice way to get, get your workout seen by the people. And it's what we've always said on this podcast is seeing other people's work is just. The, the most inspiring thing of however much experience people have gotten. So I'm always really keen to see people's work because that gives you loads of ideas and I can steal them.

Steve Vaughan: And just on that final point on that is that we are working, dear Lister, to get this podcast on YouTube. We do have a YouTube presence, but it's the audio. Podcast with a thumbnail. So we're just working out the menu. Shy if I had to actually get the video uploaded and not duplicate what we've already got on there.

We'll be coming up in the next couple of weeks. So don't forget to check out it on YouTube. And obviously it's just called the photography pod. So Nick, Jason, any final thoughts from you before we wrap up? That's it for me. It's been fascinating. It has absolutely. Thanks very much 

Jason Ingram: for having me. It's been great to have you on Jason.

Steve Vaughan: It's been great to find out more about the world of garden photography. So thank you dear listener for listening to us. For another week or another [00:54:00] two weeks. We'll be back again soon with another podcast until that happy shooting out there and we'll talk to you soon. Bye. 

Jason Ingram: Bye.