When we designed and built our garden, it was to test new ideas, build things that contractors told us wouldn’t work and create more living spaces for ourselves, birds and insects. The cats benefitted, too. We think of it as a mad landscape architect’s lab, still unfinished around the edges but with the main elements in place.
Now, it seems that a crazy, wild around the edges garden is worth talking about. A major local magazine is doing a story on our crazy, unconventional, untrimmed garden.
A photographer arrived, with sacks full of Alien Bees, camera bodies and lenses. The cat wasted no time asserting her territory, camping on one of the equipment bags and making sure her claws were sharp.
We did all kinds of silly poses. Some with “petit syrah” in fancy glasses (no drinking on the job here; the stuff was really pomegranate juice). We played roshambo. We told fish stories. We looked at birds, we sat by a fire, at a table, strolled around the garden. The shutter clicked. There’s probably at least 1 gigabyte of outtakes just of our mugs. Hopefully there will be a jewel of a photo in there somewhere. We won’t know until the magazine comes out.
We were supposed to look comfortable and relaxed, sipping “wine” and conversing casually, as though there were no guy standing about ten feet away snapping away with a 5D. We were not supposed to look cold, like it was 72° F instead of 60°. Our tiny fire gave off more of an atmospheric smoky effect than actual heat.
That’s acting, I suppose. It seems like they’re always filming hot steamy tropical scenes in cold weather, so here we were in a similar situation. A taste of Hollywood, right in our own backyard.
As for the garden, it got shot to doll rags, as Louie L’Amour might have said. Afternoon shots, wide angle shots, telephoto shots, evening shots, almost-night shots filled in with remote strobes set high upon light stands.
