flowers

As the autumn nip arrives in the air and I start clear the garden ready for winter, it’s good to remember how wonderful the colour we had earlier in the year.

Not much to say about this one, lovely garden, lovey chap and lovely cups of tea and all manner of little things to eat.

God these garden shoots, you forget them, they nearly always shot a year before so when they go to press the right flowers are out, this was a great morning getting there for 1st light, I knew I need a little help from the big soft box in the sky and I got what I wanted page 4 of the issuu article long grasses with sun raising, top shot in my book. Anyway hope you enjoy them here on in the magazine.

The most lovely of editors Clare Foster at H&G, sends me on some stunning garden shoots a couple of times a year and this was one of them, I have shot the hotel before, many years ago for a Sunday supp I think, I remember thinking what lovely gardens and lake were so strangely I am back to shoot them now. A good forecast for the morning so I got there just before 5am, dawn breaking and just a hint of mist forming over the lower meadow and lake. They have done a great job at keeping it just tame in the meadow and wet lands around the lake and I would describe the rest of the garden as formal cottage, full of colour. A great vision of the owners and lots of hard work by the gardeners. Gravetye Manor is well worth a look.

Showed you a image of Tiger a a few months ago, well he ended up here, please take a look.

Was going through some images the other day, sorting out a new b/w portfolio and new images for my website and in doing it just started putting images together in the way I would like them to be seen, which was very strange at 1st as all of my imagery is shot for editorial of private client and I never really get any say in how it is used, it fact in the words of a well respected picture editor “ray once you have shot them and we have paid for them, they are nothing to do with you” they were caring words about don’t get to precious about you images. So in putting these images together it was very pleasing, I hope it is the same for you.

My daughters birthday today, so happy birthday Lisa have a great day.

Its a simple but very effective trick to put fresh herbs into room flowers, give the room the feel that all the doors and windows have been open all day and the country side is flowing though your home. 2nd job for a new client all went well and she still smiling…where’s that beer.

Just like London buses, haven’t shot many gardens for a while and then I shoot about 6 in a row, I am not complaining, I love shooting them and meeting the gardeners behind them, its just they way the cookie crumbles sometimes. Just about to shoot one east of Edinburgh a garden set around a Lutyens house, so looking forward to that but the interim we a just processing another garden shot on spec, a lovely cottage garden owned by Albert Wier. it was a pleasure to meet and shoot Albert’s garden, so keep lookout for some RM bylines in those gardening sections.

Office most of this week me and Liam living in the semi dark like a couple of hermits processing 8 days of work, but we have made a little time to get out the new Mainstreamimages news letter/blog http://mainstreamimages.blogspot.com/

Well it’s the 1st week of June and I think my garden is at its best, its normally earlier but as very where seems to be 2-3 weeks behind this year, I like a lot of gardeners have lost quite a lot of plants this year with the hard winter and sustained frosts we had ealier in the year. I thought I would share a few images with you.