Where are all the people?

Posted on 2007-06-08 by admin

Bonsai paparazzo

Julie, who authors the daily journal, Human Flower Project, recently commented:

It interests (and surprises) me that there are so FEW photos of people in the garden. Any idea why?

She went on to write her own post on this topic:

One might say that since gardens—and photographs, too—are men’s, women’s and children’s creations, they embody a kind of humanism. It just takes a penetrating eye to see the human mind at work in a glorious perennial border or a well-framed foxglove. That’s surely so. But gardens are both by and FOR people, so why are do so few of the Brooklyn Garden’s visitors show us what people are doing there, how they interact with this glorious environment? The same holds true in most gardening magazines and websites. Among the many that feature fine photos of home, public and commercial gardens, one rarely sees a hand pruning or a vagrant snoozing. Why is this?

I hadn’t responded yet to Julie’s comment when I read her post today. So this is my response.

I know I’ve contributed just a handful of photos to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors pool with people in them. I’ve included a few of them in this post. Most of my photos don’t have people in them. I have some ideas why that might be.

Often the people I end up photographing are other photographers. Why? Because they’re in the way of my shot! Making lemons from lemonade (or something), they become the subject, or at least part of the composition.

Reflections

More often, people are are incidental to the shot, or unavoidable, so I include them anyway.

Entrance to the Native Flora Garden, April 2007

Most rarely for my photographs, people are the subject.

Alessandro Chiari, BBG’s Chief Propagator, And Titan Arum “Baby”, August 2006

Mark Fisher and Titan Arum “Baby”

Forsythia handouts, April 2007

I’m not generally a sociable person. I’m bad with names, faces, and people. I’ve never been comfortable photographing people. There are so many great faces and characters in New York City, I wouldn’t know where to begin photographing them. Not to mention I avoid confrontation. A telephoto lens helps.

Lily Pool Terrace, November 2005

Anyone is welcome to join the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors group and contribute photos of the gardens. I also actively search for photos of the garden and invite their contribution, especially from folks who are not already members of the group and don’t know about it yet. There’s no formula for what I look for. But one of the criteria is “unusualness”: an unusual perspective of a well-photographed site, or an ephemeral moment.

I think part of the reason why there are so few photos with people in them is that they are not usually the subject of the photo. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden is located in a dense urban area and gets a lot of visitors. We don’t normally go to a garden to see other people. For example, the Cherry Blossom Festival at BBG is packed with thousands of people. So a photo of cherry trees in full bloom, without a soul in sight, is unusual!

Brownstone Garden Walk, 1/3: Fort Greene

Posted on 2007-06-04 by admin

Hydrangea and Sweet Potato Vine, 116 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn

Numbered as they were in the tour guide. Listed in the order I visited them.

Stop #6: 42 South Portland Avenue

Stop #7: 151 DeKalb Avenue

Stop #8: 152 DeKalb Avenue

Stop #9: 116 Lafayette Avenue

Stop #10: 310 Carlton Avenue

Brownstone Garden Walk, 2/3: Clinton Hill

Posted on 2007-06-04 by admin

Roses climbing on steel beam, 222 Washington Avenue, Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Numbered as they were in the tour guide. Listed in the order I visited them.

Stop #16: 152 Willoughby Avenue

Stop #15: 227 Washington Avenue

Stop #14: 219 Washington Avenue

Stop #11: 222 Washington Avenue

Stop #12: 218 & 216 Washington Avenue

Stop #13: 190 Washington Avenue

Clinton Hill (Flickr Collection)
The 10th Annual Brownstone Brooklyn Garden Walk
Brownstone Garden Walk, 1/3: Fort Greene
Brownstone Garden Walk, 3/3: Prospect Heights

Help me select the BBG Visitors Group photo for June

Posted on 2007-06-01 by admin

Lavender border along the Cranford Rose Garden, taken May 28, 2007, by TheGirlsNY

Update 2007.06.08: I selected the photo above as the BBGV group photo for June 2007. Thanks to everyone who weighed in and contributed suggestions.

Be sure to check out the comments to this post and follow the links for an interesting blog conversation about why there are so few people in these photos.

I’m a co-admin for a Flickr group, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Visitors photo pool. In May I thought I would start rotating the group photo which represents the group in Flickr. I’m trying to pick the photo for June.

It’s a tough decision. Over 200 photos were posted in May, out of over 1,100 photos since Paul-M started the group last year. And May is such an explosion. There was the Cherry Blossom Festival, of course, but there are also tulips, azaleas, wisteria, and even roses that have started blooming.

So, help me pick. Here are a few of my favorites of the 200, in order by the date taken. Leave a comment and let me know your favorites. Or you can nominate another one from the pool. The only criteria are that the picture was taken during May 2007, and that it’s not one of my photos. I’ll make a decision over the weekend.

Pink Snow, taken May 6, 2007, by Abizeleth

Cherry Lane, Taken May 9, 2007, by Keith Carver

Tulips, taken May 12, 2007, by James Prescott

Wisteria, taken May 15, 2007, by PaulS

Borage?, taken May 29, 2007, by amg

Back in the Day

Posted on 2007-05-23 by admin

2008.03.10: Welcome – I guess – New York magazine Intelligencer readers. I encourage you to read my post about the BlogFest itself, which inspired this “hyperniche nostalgia,” as NY characterizes it. (Shouldn’t that be hypo-niche? sub-niche? micro-niche?)

Crazy Diamond, aka Flatbush Gardener, circa 1980s.

I wrote the following as part of my Brooklyn Blogfest coverage. I now find myself in the position of being one of the coordinators of the first Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow, which it is hoped will take the spirit and energy of the Brooklyn Blogfest on the road to different neighborhoods in Brooklyn. I hope to provide details of the inaugural event later tonight or this week.

I’m highlighting this bit of autobiography and technology history in its own post here because it expresses what I’m trying to bring of myself to this first event.

[Written 2007.05.11]

Back in the Day

Gather round me, children. Close your eyes, and try to imagine it. It was long before the Web, when the Internet existed only in military and select academic settings. It was the time before GUIs, before mice and color monitors, when MS-DOS and 1200bps dial-up modems roamed the Earth.

There were these things called computer bulletin board services, BBS for short. Your computer told your modem the phone number of the BBS. Your modem dialed, their modem answered, and both modems connected with each other. Then your computer could talk to their computer. Directly. No Web, no Internet. Machino a machino. You could leave messages for other BBS members; the precursor of email. You could even chat with someone else who was also logged in; the precursor of IM today.

I was a member of a BBS based in New York City called The BackRoom. It was, as one might guess from the name, a gay BBS. It was an online community of gay men, mostly, living in NYC, mostly. We had handles, like CB radio users (1970s technology). My CB handle in the 1970s, 30+ years ago, was Green Thumb. My BackRoom handle was Crazy Diamond, after the Pink Floyd song, “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond.”

Donor Recognition plaque on the wall of the second floor landing of the center staircase of the NYC Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.

We were an online community. A community of humpy nerds, of which I was one. We were not only virtual. We also met, face-to-face, at a periodic event called the Backroom Bash. Sometimes we met at a bar, sometimes at the home of a member or the Backroom founder and sysop, Art Kohn. We built community online, with handles and anonymity. We met in person, still with our handles, and less anonymity, and built community there as well. Our virtual community was enriched by our interactions in 3D, and vice versa.

Last night [the Blogfest] reminded me of that.

The 2nd Annual Brooklyn Blogfest, for real

Posted on 2007-05-11 by admin

[2007.05.23: Moved Back in the Day to its own post.]
[2007.05.13 23:50 EDT: Moved all links to their own post.]
[2007.05.13 10:50 EDT: Added still more links and link to video.]
[2007.05.12 04:00 EDT: Added several more links.]
[2007.05.11 23:30 EDT: Updated links, and wrote Back in the Day.]
[2007.05.11 20:00 EDT: Added one photo of me, and link love to other blogfest participants writing about the event.]
[2007.05.11 16:36 EDT: Added some photos.]

It was a great event. I was too exhausted, achy, and feverish when I got home to write anything last night. I’ll be coming back tonight to write more. A couple of quick notes now.

Update 2007.05.11 23:30 EDT: I’m back. Only minor edits and links added to what I wrote earlier today. Some possibly closing thoughts here.

Back in the Day

[2007.05.23: Moved Back in the Day to its own post.]

Present Day

Ye Olde Stone House

I met lots of my fellow Brooklynites and bloggers. I am terrible with names and faces and, well, people, mostly, so if I met you or gave you a card, please leave a comment below to slap me a reminder! A special shout out to my neighbors Brenda of Crazy Stable, and Anne of Sustainable Flatbush, both of whom I met for the first time last night.

Our host(ess) for the evening, Louise Crawford, Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, keeping time with the broom

Robert Guskind, Gowanus Lounge

Steve Johnson, outside.in

Lumi Michelle Rolley, No Land Grab

Jonathan Butler, Brownstoner

Norman Oder, Atlantic Yards Report

Eleanor Traubman, Creative Times

Despite enduring a root canal from the dentist earlier in the day, my partner tuffed it out and accompanied me to the blogfest. His name tag read “Blog Widow” and he found others last night with whom to commiserate. He said “You’re famous” based on the response I received at the open mic. And here I’d thought it was my natural charisma, wit and charm. Or, if not, that the response I received was for “Flatbush” more than me. Represent.

News12 Reporter Heather Abraham recording her voice-overs outside the Old Stone House before the doors opened.

NewsChannel4 Van outside the dog run in J.J. Byrne Park.

News12 Brooklyn, Brooklyn Independent Television (BIT), and NewsChannel4 (NYC NBC affiliate) were in the house. (A very crowded and cozy Old Stone House, it was.) BIT interviewed me on-camera along with several others at the end of the evening to get our reactions. And Dope on the Slope conducted a probing and humorous digital audio interview with me. (Note: I wasn’t serious about hoping the Bradford Pears just planted on Cortelyou Road would die soon so they could be replaced. But I bet they will expire before our mortgage does.)

Battle Diorama inside Old Stone House

Update 16:36 EDT: BIT airs at 8:30pm this evening on BCAT (Brooklyn Community Access Television). I hope to try and catch it to see if I made any face time.

Update 19:45 EDT: And here is the man behind the blog, yours truly, Flatbush Gardener. Thanks to the blogfest participants who dared risk their lenses against my visage.

Flatbush Gardener, present day
Credit: Robert Guskind, Gowanus Lounge

Link Love

All the links now have their own post.

Bling: Minicards

Posted on 2007-05-10 by admin

My left hand holding a Moo Minicard with a photo of my left hand holding a cluster of fallen leaves on Rugby Road.

I’ll be handing these little beauties out at tonight’s Brooklyn Blogfest. Each is printed with a crop of one of my Flickr photos on the obverse. The reverse has my name, blog and Flickr site addresses, and the date, time and title of the photo.

Disclosure: When I first tried to order these through the Moo site, there was a problem with the order. They apologized, attributing the problem to something to do with Flickr’s API. They gave me a coupon code for a free set of cards. Normally, they cost $25 (USD) including shipping/postage for 100 cards, or 25 cents per card.

Flickr has a link to Moo on their home page. This takes you right to the following steps to create the minicards.

Step 1: Choose photos from Flickr

For the past few months, I’ve been collecting sets of my photos by color. The Moo photo chooser lets you filter your Flickr photostream by set. This made it easy to select the best images for each color, and drag and drop them into the selection area.

There are 100 minicards in each set. The photos you select are are duplicated as needed to fill out 100 cards. I chose 50 images, so I got exactly 2 cards for each photo.

Step 2: Crop photos to fit the mini-card form factor

Here you select the crop for each image. You can set the crop vertically or horizontally, and drag it up and down or left-to-right to frame it best for the card.

In retrospect, the horizontal images work out best on the card. It’s more natural to hold the card horizontally, as I do in the photo at the top of the page, than vertically. This might influence my choices for images if I were to do this again.

Step 3: Personalize to include information about yourself and/or your photos

I figured I’d be able to personalize the cards with my name and contact info. What I didn’t expect was that I could include information about each photo on the reverse of each card. I chose to include the date and time the photo was taken, as well as the Flickr title of each photo.

Again, in retrospect, I should have made sure that each photo had a text title, instead of the default filename from the camera. The other thing I would change would be to drop the profile photo. It’s too small to be of much use, and it take sup too much room which could be used for longer lines of text.

I also forgot to include my email address in my info! That’s something I would correct the next time I do this.

The result

This shows 40 of the different images I selected. I selected 50 images altogether, 2 cards for each image. You can really see the rainbow effect here, as I intended.

Everyone to whom I’ve given a card has remarked on the quality and feel of the card-stock. They just feel good in the hand. They’re the same thickness as a business card, but they feel stiffer, both because they are smaller than business cards – about 40% of the area – and because the cards have a matte, plasticy-feeling finish to them.

I also spent some time playing around with the cards, arranging them in different combinations, to see how a rainbow photo banner might work. It could be very effective. I’ll need to select horizontal crops of my images which could work, and also work out what dimensions the banner should be. I’ll also need to play around with different fading or transparency, so that the blog title and other info will be readable against the background photos.

Yet another future project.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, April 14, 2007

Posted on 2007-04-18 by admin

[Updated 2007.04.19 21:30 EDT: Added Fragrance Garden, Magnolia Plaza, Daffodil Hill, and Lily Pool Terrace.]

Magnolia Flower, Magnolia Plaza, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

We visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden last Saturday. So did a lot of other people. It was a perfect day, the day before the Nor’Easter hit and dumped a record rainfall on New York City.

As before, two ways you can explore. The title of this post links to the Flickr set of photos. Or, you can explore the Google Map of my visit.

Rock Garden

Caucasian Wingnut

Best. Name. Ever. For a tree. This may be the most photographed non-flowering tree in the Garden. I’ll honor it with its own post some day.

Compost Demonstration Area

Another feature of the Garden deserving of its own post. Just a couple of shots here. Check the Flickr set for all the signage. I liked the homemade styles; either one would work in my garden, now that I have enough space. Yes, I’m a geek.

Native Flora Garden

Japanese Garden

I walked the south path of the garden. I don’t remember ever walking this way before. It’s a different perspective. And it’s also where the turtles like to hang out.

Fragrance Garden

This has the most beautiful stonework in the whole garden. It lies between the Shakespeare Garden and the recently landmarked Laboratory Administration Building which faces Magnolia Plaza.

Magnolia Plaza

They were at their peak when we visited. They’ll be just passing their peak right now.

Daffodil Hill

Originally known as Boulder Hill, there’s still a marker for the old name.

Lily Pool Terrace

The Annual Borders are about to explode with Tulips. I didn’t get any shots of the Mixed (Shrubs and Perennials) Border, which has year-round interest and is lovely right now. Next trip.

Gardening Don’t

Posted on 2007-04-13 by admin

If you’re going to water your garden with a hose held at waist level, at least wear pants.

This was a window display for Paul Smith at a clothing store on 5th Avenue near 17th Street in Manhattan a few weeks ago. Note the backdrop of pretty flower pictures. And the hose unreeling from the satchel bag. I guess gardening fantasies sell to their demographic.