How many photos to take before starting your garden design

Garden photos on a wall, by Nik via Unsplash

Why your gut instinct of how many photos you need is (probably) wrong.

(4 minute read)

If you ask an experienced garden designer how many photos they take of a yard before they start on a design, the number they give you will likely be higher than you were thinking. Much higher. Maybe an order of magnitude (10x) higher. And they might be underestimating.

As I write this, I just finished air-dropping photos from my iPhone to my iMac. I usually do these in batches of around 50 to avoid transfer errors, "which should go quickly" I thought, "because this is a simple project and so I didn't take that many photos."

I... was wrong.

Why take photos before you start

The collection of photos you take before you begin working on your garden design has a wide range of uses:

Getting a fresh perspective on your property
The 'Before' photos for your Before & After carousel posts on Instagram
Recording important features & details
Keeping track of utilities like water, drainage, electrical connections, etc.
Being able to zoom in to look at something when it is dark, rainy, snowing, hailing, foggy, smoky, 1 am, etc.
Noticing something important that your brain had been helpfully filtering out for you
and more...

Why take more photos

Think about that list for a moment.

Q- Are the photos you would need for one of those categories (eg. 'before' photos) the same as the photos you would need for other categories (eg. utilities, overall context, etc.)? Maybe, but most of the time it's helpful to have photos that are targeted toward the specific information you are looking for.

Do I really need so many?

There is one important caveat- I don't live there.

I would prefer not to drive over there every time I have a question. Also they probably don't want me stopping by every time I want to check into something. (Don't get me wrong, I get on famously with all of my wonderful clients. Yet having me stop by all the time would get old, don't you think?)

If you are a homeowner and working on your own garden design, then sure- you could just look out of a window or pop outside for a few minutes to check into something you want to clarify. That can be really helpful. And also- see bullet point #5 above, because...

If you've finally gotten the kids to bed and have some time to work on your garden design, are you really going to stumble around in the dark with a flashlight when a question comes up??

Having a good set of pictures means you can check into whatever comes to mind whenever it comes to mind, even if you are thinking about your garden design while eating a bowl of cereal at 1 am. (guilty)

And if you are a Garden Lover or Garden Specialist who is helping someone else figure out some aspect of their garden, having this robust library of photos on hand is a perfect way to have their entire garden space available to you to explore from the comfort of your desk. No driving across town required.

What it looks like on the ground

Whether it is your own property or the property of someone you are helping, imagine showing up for the first time knowing you probably won't be back for a while. What photos would you need to answer any questions that might come up?

Pretending this space is at least and hour or more away may help motivate you to go the extra mile.

Not sure what photos you need? Let's take another look at that list:

Getting a fresh perspective on your property
The 'Before' photos for your Before & After carousel posts on Instagram
Recording important features & details
Keeping track of utilities like water, drainage, electrical connections, etc.
Being able to zoom in to look at something when it is dark, rainy, snowing, hailing, foggy, smoky, 1 am, etc.
Noticing something important that your brain had been helpfully filtering out for you
and more...

One of my favorite techniques is to pick a good overview spot (or several) and take a series of overlapping pictures while turning in a circle. This gives the same 'looking around' effect as a panoramic photo would but without the image distortion. Some of these images may even be ideal for the 'Before' photos!

Pro tip: Know which way you swipe in your photo library on your phone to go to the next image, and then take the photos while turning in that direction. On my phone, because I need to swipe left, I take photos while turning to the right.

While there are many more tips, tricks, and techniques I use to make sure I've covered all the bases, just remember that the single biggest lever for success is volume.

By capturing a full collection of photos you'll have a touchstone that will make it much easier to quickly dive back into your memories of the space- so that you can see and recall what conditions look like on the ground.

A full stack of garden photos, by Annie Spratt via Unsplash

Case in point

So how many photos did I end up with for my relatively simple project?

299

Yes, really. :-D

1.35 Gigabytes of digital storage

...and my camera is a bit older, so the photos are smaller than they would be if I upgraded to a more current iPhone.

Yet looking though the collection, I'm glad I took all of the photos that I took.

In fact, I spotted a stray hose bib that I didn't catch when I was walking around the property.