Garden photography: "Even compost looks exciting from above"

Gardens are usually photographed from the ground.

The photographer and journalist Martin Staffler is now showing private and public facilities from a bird's eye view.

It is made possible by his drone equipped with a camera.

What does a garden have to have in order for you to arrive with your drone?

Formal structures are always helpful for good photos from a bird's eye view.

Be it a geometrically laid out garden with a system of paths, with hedge structures.

You can see that from above, it divides and structures the picture.

Depending on the flight altitude, the beds can also look great - coarse and fine leaf structures create exciting effects.

Grasses in the bed can look like a starfish colony.

For example, I also photographed the lotus area in the Arboretum Ellerhoop.

Otherwise the lotus blossoms are more likely to catch the eye, but from the air it is the structure of the leaves on the water.

Up close, colors and flowers are important.

Not from above?

Above all, green and brown come into play, the plants and the earth are in the foreground.

Especially in spring.

Single flowers mean more of a nuance in the overall color scheme.

Even red can no longer be seen so clearly.

If you want the colors and details, you have to get closer, that is, take photos from five to ten meters.

However, autumn leaves in orange, yellow and red also come across very strikingly from a height.

In autumn everything is also more densely grown, so you can see less soil in the bed.

What surprised you the most about taking photos?

I was surprised by all the unsightly things that come to light!

In the garden you usually have to look left and right, you can mainly see what is in the first and second row.

If you fly over it, you can see what is hidden further back.

Garden hoses, for example, or gaps in the vegetation.

And what you usually don't notice, like a manhole cover in the middle of the path.

With some pictures I have taken the artistic freedom to carefully touch up something like that.

It would be a shame if a manhole cover ruins an otherwise great picture.

Isn't it also a chance to show what you can't see otherwise?

Yes. A work corner can also look exciting from above, such as the compost and work area in the garden of Herrenmühle Bleichheim. Or the nursery in Peter Janke's Hortvs in Hilden. The three-dimensionality also disappears directly from above, which is sometimes irritating, but graphically worth seeing. A tree is visually on the same level as bulb flowers or the road surface. In general, of course, as a photographer, you can do more from the normal perspective, from the ground. For me, the picture from above is more of an exciting addition. For garden designers and friends of great gardens this is interesting to look at as a garden and planting plan that has come to life, for other people it is beautiful and often surprising. And the comparison of the normal to the bird's eye view sometimes helps with orientation.

What conditions do you need to get your drone up and running?

The weather has to be right.

Even in light winds it can no longer be steered properly.

Precipitation of any kind affects the sensors.

Bright sun is never good for photos anyway, even if the shadows are usually not in the picture.

It is no longer allowed after dusk.

You need a drone license and you have to know the rules.

There are so many restrictions around airports, hospitals, utility poles, highways, highways and residential areas.

And of course you always need the consent of the garden owner and park manager.

Where does the drone reach its limits?

I can't get larger gardens like the Hortvs in Hilden on it vertically from above, so I have to go a little on the slope.

Something like the 17 hectare Ellerhoop Arboretum, of course, never fits into a single picture.

The drone cannot climb higher than 100 meters.

In return, we show a view that visitors do not have from below.

Are there any gardens that look better from above than from below?

A cheeky question!

I don't know of any example.

I would rather speak of equivalence: When it comes to whether a garden offers as many exciting impressions from above as from below, I call the Münstermann family's garden, the Camenhof.

It has many formally separated garden rooms.

I also thought that was a great story from above.