Yesterday (Tuesday) morning I visited Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens prior to our Photo Walk around the gardens next Sunday, May 31 from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm. The weather was partly cloudy, and my latest iPhone, a 17 Pro, was tucked into my shirt pocket. Join me as I preview some of the floral delights in late spring at this spectacular historical location.
The alliums and ferns made a fine shaded foreground as I headed to the Carriage House to check in with the Stan Hywet staff. This is where we will meet around 1:45 pm prior to our photo walk.
The warmer weather associated with climate change has hastened the blooming of the rhododendrons and azaleas that line the London Plane Allee near the South Terrace of the vast Manor House built by the Seiberling family in the early 1900s. I used a 48mm (2X) lens setting to create this composition.
In late May the gardens below the stone balustrade near the West Terrace Overlook are lined with twin rows of multicolored peonies and irises.
Below is the view looking in the opposite direction.
The iPhone 17 Pro has a new 48-megapixel 4x-8x telephoto camera, which I used at the 200mm (8X) setting to photograph the American Robin and peonies near the West Terrace Overlook. It’s important to hold the iPhone as still as possible when taking wildlife portraits.
Try to hold the iPhone parallel to the vertical orientation of the walls and windows to minimize any perspective distortion in the image.
The Japanese Garden has an attractive waterfall near the north entrance. By default, the iPhone uses a very fast shutter speed, which renders the falling water frozen in mid-air. However, by setting the iPhone in Live Photo mode, and then editing the image using the Long Exposure option, the video portion of the image exposure is used to simulate a longer exposure which blurs the waterfall’s falling water.
In late spring and early summer, the multi-colored lupines in the Great Garden put on a spectacular show, and make great foregrounds for wide-angle images of the distant Manor House. You could also spend hours taking close-up portraits of the dozens of flower species that are grown in this large garden.
The latest iPhones allow you to photograph scenic images in Portrait mode, with depth maps created by the LIDAR scanners incorporated in the iPhone’s camera array. This allows you to adjust the point of focus and the depth-of-field AFTER the image is taken, using the power of Apple’s computational photography. You cannot do this with your Nikon, Canon, or Sony SLR or mirrorless digital camera.
If you would like to learn more about some of the latest capabilities of iPhone and high-end Android smartphones, there are still a few places available on our Stan Hywet spring photo walk next Sunday afternoon, May 31, from 2-4pm. To register, visit the Stan Hywet website.