Allan Mandell's skill at harmonious composition is obvious in this photograph of Liburnum underplanted with allium at the Van Dusen Botanical Garden in Vancouver, B.C.

To award-winning Portland garden photographer Allan Mandell, a garden is both a microcosm of nature and a sculpture. At its best, a garden gives us a slice of the emotional, sometimes even transformational, experience we get from hiking in the mountains or walking along an ocean beach. The better the garden, the more intense the experience. Mandell strives to touch this spirit, to catch the elusive essence of a garden in a photo. It sounds like a tall order, but no one is better at conveying the atmosphere of a garden on film than Mandell, whose work is published internationally. He'll be in Seattle later this month to teach a workshop on garden photography, his first here. It won't be a class about lenses or shutter speeds but about how to really see the garden in all its dimensions.

I've followed many a photographer, in awe at the patience and artistry it takes to capture a living, growing garden on film. I've learned that the garden I saw can be nearly unrecognizable when the photos come back. The camera, unlike our eye, doesn't judge, filter or interpret. The lens is a direct route from illusion to reality.

So often, photography seems to be about the equipment. One photographer I worked with wore a fishing-like vest, every pocket stuffed with lenses. It was intimidating. Mandell never lets the gear come between himself and the garden. "I'm as much interested in the internal, what you're feeling in the garden, as the external, what you see," he says. "I try to get the outside and the inside world in an image."
 

Now In Bloom Finally, it should be warm enough to plant annuals outdoors, and few are as dramatic in color and leaf as New Guinea impatiens. Unlike the more familiar kinds of impatiens, they can take full sun and have handsome, glossy leaves. Numerous, luminous flowers are perfect to fill a pot with color all summer long. The tangerine-flowered Impatiens 'Tango' has large, vivid-orange flowers shown off against dark, bronze-green leaves. 'Tango' will bloom for months with adequate water, doses of fish fertilizer and sun for most of the day.

In his popular workshops, Mandell breaks his approach down into building blocks. He explains how to distill the garden into its underlying structure by identifying the simple lines. It is this simplicity, plus harmony of proportion, that creates composition. When you're able to see this way, the spaces between objects (or plants) become as important as the objects themselves. The camera is dispassionate — it could care less about a messy hose or unswept patio, for it frankly (relentlessly) records what is there. "You need to pay attention with the same intense dedication to the whole visual field, and then your images will have real power," says Mandell. "You want to set up a photo that sucks you in and takes you on a visual journey."

Mandell has advanced degrees in print making and photography, but his skill in garden photography was honed by traveling to Japan three times, lingering long enough to shoot the entire cycle of seasonal change. While Japanese gardens may appear to be simple arrangements of stones, moss and an azalea or two, the space is skillfully sculpted to give the viewer a specific, often contemplative, experience. Balance and proportion are key in these supremely symbolic gardens, so Japan proved a perfect training ground for Mandell to refine the techniques that make his work so evocative. "I'm not interested in the clinical, descriptive shot," he explains.
 

		The open, orange blossoms of Icelandic poppies look even more flamboyant against a stately array of iris 'Ominous Stranger' in bud.

In order to learn how to go beyond the clinical and touch the spirit of the garden, all you need is a basic camera that you can use on manual mode and a tripod. Mandell stresses the importance of the tripod, for it frees you to control what is sharp and what isn't, as well as slowing you down as you go through the garden. "The gear isn't the thing," he says, "the vision is the thing."

Work with the master

Allan Mandell will be in the area for a lecture and workshop May 30 and 31. The event begins with a lecture on capturing the spirit of gardens, 7 to 9 p.m. May 30 at the Center for Urban Horticulture. The next morning he will lead a photo shoot from 9 to noon at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. Participants will meet back at the center later that evening for a potluck dinner and critique of the photos shot. The class is limited to 20 people, so everyone will have a chance to work closely with Mandell and receive feedback on their work. (Future workshops are planned if the first fills up.) The fee is $90, plus film processing; preregistration required, call 206-685-8033.