Make time for planning

Clive Nichols is one of the world's most successful flower and garden photographers. He has won many awards including Garden Photographer of the Year 2005 by the Garden Writers Guild. His work has appeared in countless magazines, books and calendars throughout the world and he is in constant demand as a lecturer and teacher, running many workshops for the Royal Horticultural Society. His advice will let you in on some of the secrets of the garden photography world and help you improve your macro and landscape garden work greatly. For more information visit Clive Nichols.

Here's his tip:

"To photograph gardens you really need a lot of experience. You need to know when a garden is going to be at its best and then you need to plan to be there at the best time of day - which is usually dawn or dusk for maximum atmosphere.

If you're doing flower close-ups you really need a plan. You need to know in some detail what type of picture you want to take and once you have made a decision you must really go for that style.

The shot to the right was taken 5 minutes after dawn at Pettifers Garden, Oxfordshire. Pettifers is a garden that is just 2 miles from where I live and so I'm able to plan the best time to visit. I had visited the garden and seen that the roses were 'au point'. I had been watching the weather forecast on google very closely for several days and suddenly a high pressure was predicted for the following morning, with dawn sunshine and no wind. The planning worked, I had eyed up the spot below the pergola as a possible shot and it all came together in a few marvellous minutes. I was able to capture several shots on the Canon IDS MKIII with a wide angle lens at f16 and a shutter speed of 1 second."