This is my second of three “year in review” posts. If you have not read the first one, you can find it here for more context about my photography in 2024, and you can find the third post with my color nature photography here. For this post, I am sharing my favorite photos of plants, both from wild places and cultivated gardens.
Over the last few years, plant photography has played an increasingly important role in my creative endeavors. When I first started photographing plants, I used the photo outings to a local botanic garden as a way to fill gaps in my travel schedule and build my technical photography skills. Over time, my interest in plants evolved from focusing exclusively on their beautiful visual qualities to also using them as a gateway to more deeply understanding and connecting with a landscape.
As I mentioned in my last post, we traveled to Iceland in June of last year and I’ll use this trip as an example. We visited Iceland five times from 2012 to 2016, and then again in 2024. With so much time elapsing since our 2016 visit, this recent trip revealed a stark contrast with how I experienced the landscape during our previous trips. In 2012, with first impressions in mind, I remember thinking of the monotonous swath of green in front of me as generally boring.
By 2016, I had started superficially noticing that the swath of green is actually an incredibly diverse ecosystem of plants and mosses that look quite delicate but are capable of surviving in extreme conditions. On this most recent trip, I felt the pull beyond the showiest of species, like colorful autumnal birches, to the plants that are only revealed with close observation. I ended up spending a significant portion of the trip looking for, identifying (or trying to), learning about, and photographing these plants and in the process, I learned significantly more about the Icelandic landscape than I had during those five previous trips combined.
With more than a decade of experience in photography, it can sometimes feel like I am not making much progress. This trip to Iceland helped me appreciate how much progress I have made with some of the practices that have become increasingly important to my creative endeavors: being less judgemental and more open-minded about the subjects that are worthy of being photographed, developing my skills as a naturalist and using them to better understand a landscape, seeing many more opportunities with improved observation skills, stronger technical skills, and a refined personal vision for how I want to photograph and share subjects that resonate with me—like the diverse array of plants shown below. While I know I still have a long way to go to be the photographer I want to be, seeing evidence of this progress in 2024 was a highlight of my photographic experiences.
I’ll be back in a few days with the final post in this series, with my favorite color landscape and small scene photos from 2024.
Horsetail and Grasses, Iceland
Yucca, Zion National Park
Lady’s Mantle, Iceland
Alpine Lady’s Mantle, Iceland
Goldenrod and other wildflowers gone to seed, Minnesota
Phlox and Cinquefoil, Wichita Botanica Garden
Forest Floor, Porcupine Mountains, Michigan
Baby Pine, Wisconsin Northwoods
Sumac, Porcupine Mountains, Michigan
Sweetfern, Wisconsin Northwoods
Ornamental Purslane (?), Denver Botanic Garden
Ornamental Purslane (?), Denver Botanic Garden
Mosaic Plant, Denver Botanic Garden
Sea Sandwort, Iceland
Roseroot, Iceland
Juniper, Iceland
Hare’s Ear (?), Denver Botanic Garden
Longleaf Jointfir, White Sands National Park
Oysterplant, Iceland
Sarah Marino is a full-time photographer, nature enthusiast, and writer based in southwestern Colorado. In addition to photographing grand landscapes, Sarah is best known for her photographs of smaller subjects including intimate landscapes, abstract renditions of natural subjects, and creative portraits of plants and trees. Sarah is the author or co-author of a diverse range of educational resources for nature photographers on subjects including composition and visual design, photographing nature’s small scenes, black and white photography, Death Valley National Park, and Yellowstone National Park. Sarah, a co-founder of the Nature First Alliance for Responsible Nature Photography, also seeks to promote the responsible stewardship of natural and wild places through her photography and teaching.