BlogSmall growers
Photos that sell plants
A buyer who cannot pick the plant up has only the photo to go on. For a small grower that photo does a good part of the selling, on a market sign, a social post, an availability list or an online shop, and it is usually taken on a phone between other jobs. The things that make a plant photo work cost almost nothing, and most of them are about where you stand rather than what you hold.
Light and background
Shoot in soft light. Bright midday sun throws hard shadows and bleaches flowers, whites and yellows above all, so an overcast day, the shade of a building or the first hour after sunrise suits most plants better. Inside a greenhouse the cover has already softened the light for you. Turn the flash off, because it flattens leaves and turns glossy foliage into glare.
Keep the background plain and keep it the same from one photo to the next. A sheet of board, a painted wall, a clean bench or a length of fabric hung behind it will do, in a quiet colour that does not fight the plant. A run of plants shot against the same backdrop reads as a catalogue, and a buyer can compare them at a glance. Hoses, spare pots and the truck in the background make the plant look smaller and the nursery look untidier than it is.
Before you take the picture, wipe the pot, pick off any yellow leaves and turn the plant to its fullest side. Hold the phone level with the plant rather than looking down on it, and tap the screen on the leaves or flowers so the phone focuses where the buyer will look.
The three shots every plant needs
A buyer wants to know three things a label does not tell them well: what the plant looks like at its best, how big it really is, and what will arrive. Each needs its own picture.
The first shows the whole plant in its pot, filling most of the frame. It goes first, because it is the one buyers see in a list. The second gives a sense of scale, with a hand on the pot, a person beside a tree or a ruler next to a plug tray, so that a one gallon pot is not mistaken for a five. The third is the detail that sells the variety, whether a bloom, the colour of the leaf or the bark, close enough to see. If the plant looks very different in another season, a maple in autumn or a perennial in flower, a fourth photo of that does more than a line of description.
Show the plant at the stage you are selling it. A picture of a plant in full flower, sent to a buyer who receives it in bud, costs more goodwill than it ever earned. If you use a photo from another season or another block, say so.
Keeping the photos with the plant
Photos taken on a phone tend to stay on the phone, mixed in with everything else, and the availability list goes out without them. It helps to shoot in one session, block by block, and to file each photo by plant and size straight away, because a photo nobody can find might as well not have been taken.
In Sprout each plant on your list can carry up to six photos, added from your phone. They are scaled down as they upload, so they go up quickly and stay sharp on any screen. Drag them into order, and the first is the cover buyers see on that plant in your shop. A grower working alone can photograph the bench in the morning and have the pictures in front of buyers by lunch, and a larger nursery keeps every photo on the plant record, where everyone who sells it can find it.