How to photograph your garden for a print
A good garden photograph needs a clear subject more than perfect weather. Choose the view you recognise, then give it enough light and space to work on paper.
Choose one thing for the picture to be about
Before opening the camera, decide what you want to remember. It might be the curve of a path, a favourite bench, the first season on an allotment or a whole border in flower. Move until that subject is clear. A photograph with a path and a shed usually tells a different story from a close-up of one flower. Neither is better; they serve different memories.
The RHS's garden image guidance also recommends composing around a focal point. You can apply that principle to a small back garden without making it look like a show garden.
Look at the light on the screen
Bright sunshine can leave white flowers without visible detail and put the rest of a border into deep shadow. Try a second photograph when a cloud passes, or return when the light reaches the plants from the side. Tap the important area on your phone screen to focus. Look at the resulting photograph, not only the live preview.
Take a wider version and a closer version. Keep the phone steady, and check a flower or the shed roof at full size afterwards. If the subject is blurred, a larger print won't restore the missing detail. A breezy day may suit the garden beautifully but make a close flower photograph harder.
Leave room for the print shape
A tall phone photograph doesn't have the same proportions as every paper or canvas size. Leave some space around the flower heads and the edges of a building. The crop shouldn't remove the part that made you take the picture. Compare portrait and landscape compositions if the view allows it.
For a group of plants, check all four corners. A bright bucket or an accidental strip of sky can pull attention away from the garden. You don't have to tidy away its character; simply choose what belongs in your picture.
Keep the original file
Use the original camera file at its highest quality. Avoid screenshots, messaging-app copies and photographs downloaded again from social media. The RHS community photography guidance likewise recommends a full-resolution camera setting. Transfer the original file when somebody else takes the photograph for you.
The corner you actually work in
The greenhouse, the shed and the potting bench make good pictures, and they are the hardest to get right. Stand in the doorway and shoot along the bench. Glass throws back reflections, so move a step sideways until a window or your own shadow slides out of the frame, then take a second shot from another spot before you decide. Look at what is on the bench too. Seed labels, the radio and anything with a name or address on it will be printed along with everything else.
Greenhouses are also a fair test of an art style. Look at the corners, the panes and the roof bars in the preview. If they bend into odd shapes, the colours may be lovely but the place will not look like yours, and a straight photo print is the safer choice.
A garden is never finished
Do not wait for the border to be tidy. A picture taken in the middle of a job, with the wheelbarrow at the end of the path and a gap where something died, often holds more of your life than a tidy one. Try covering the showiest flower with your thumb. If it is still your garden, you have the right picture. A bent path, an old gate or the pots gathered by the door are what nobody else has.
It also pays to take the same view from the same spot through the year, then pick the one that feels most like being there. If frost decides your season, our UK frost dates by weather station show when the last spring and first autumn frosts usually fall, so you know when the winter picture is due.
Decide how faithful the result needs to be
Direct photo printing keeps the supplied image unchanged. Choose that for a careful record of planting or a particular flower. An art-style garden portrait can give the scene a painterly character, but it may alter plant shapes, paths or structures. Inspect the preview before choosing it. Read our comparison of the two routes if you're unsure.