Ground-level Garden

This set of images look like they should be from autumn/fall but living in Thailand that's not the case. It's currently swelteringly hot here but it is also extremely dry so many plants have shed their leaves and if you are willing to get down far enough at the right time of day then you will find that the ground is glowing in natural earth tones.

I seem to be addicted to taking these photos at the moment. Our 'golden hour' is very short so most days I grab the chance for twenty minutes of grounding myself soon after dawn and again just before dusk. There is great pleasure in the distraction from whatever I might be worried about, plus the satisfacting craft of creating the compositions and also the feeling of having discovered something. Photographs of fallen leaves taken at their level with as much blur as I can find in both foreground and background are not as common as they I think they should be.

These colours are real but the blurring that grades them into each other is an effect of photography so I can't quite claim that these images reflect exactly what I saw down there but even to the naked eye it is stunning with the low angled sun.

The hairs of a wind-blown seed tangled in the grass

I use a Sony RX10 bridge camera zoomed to its maximum telephoto (x25) and the camera is often right at ground level. I don't have a tripod that gets down that far so to start with I was hand-holding the camera and using the flip screen to make it easier to see the composition. I still do that sometimes but it is awkward to hold the camera still enough to keep the focus right and maintain the composition as I want it, so I now rest the camera on a small sandbag that does a perfect job of being both firm and flexible.

There is so much to see and so much variation amongst the leaf litter that I still haven't left our garden!

So much going on and yet nothing

This one gives a nice idea of the complex 3-d structure within the leaf-litter

To me this has the feel of a whale's back...

Even in this dry season will get a little dew

The dangling aerial roots of banyan tree

I love the tiny fruit fly in this one

Any seedlings that dare to emerge do not do very well...better to wait for the rains