Before and After pictures of a garden

May 10, 2011 8:22 AM

StockPhotographyFilter: I need before and after shots of a garden.

I'm working on a video project that needs 2 shots of a garden from the same POV - one of just dirt, and one of the garden in full bloom. I'm basically wanting to fade between the shots, in a sort of super time lapse.

The regular stock sites don't seem to have anything like this, but maybe I'm just not using the right search terms. I thought Flickr would be good, but the best I can find there is just before and after pictures of entire yard redesigns

Does anyone have any tips for sites to check, or know where I could get pictures like this? I'm definitely willing to pay for images, and I wouldn't be opposed to finding a gardening blogger/photographer and purchasing images from them either.

Bonus points for fall planted bulbs, but at this point I'll take what I can get.

Thanks!

posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

The controlled vocabularies that stock sites use may contain before and after or time lapse. This, however, is dependent upon the vendor or keyworder supplying the term. When I was a keyworder, I looked at hundreds and thousands of images and the concept you describe is uncommon. The most saleable imagery tends to be the most cliched!

A few agencies, like Inmagine, offer free research, so that might help. You may just have to composite several photos.
posted by Calzephyr at 11:51 AM on May 10, 2011

Have you tried gardenphotos.com
posted by cda at 3:11 PM on May 10, 2011

Try "landscaping" as one of your search terms, as the companies' websites may have some promotional before/after photos of work they've done setting up gardens.
posted by desertface at 3:32 PM on May 10, 2011

I can find a lot of before and after shots of gardens, but they all seem to have garden paths that were moved or something similar. I think I understand what you are going for. A shot that you can fade from one into another and have everything be situated in the same place.
posted by gregjunior at 5:05 PM on May 15, 2011

Response by poster: Calzephyr: I hadn't heard of Inmagine, and their 24 hour response looked very promising. But I filled out their research form a week ago...and haven't heard back. I guess I stumped them, too/

cda: Thanks for the tip, but unfortunately I still couldn't find what I'm looking for.

desertface: I have tried landscaping, but like I mentioned it tends to get me results full of pictures of terraformed yards. I really just need a garden bed.

gregjunior: Exactly! But it doesn't seem to exist. I guess I know what's first on my list of things to shoot if I ever start selling stock photography!


In the end, we're just going to composite a bunch of flowers into a picture of an empty garden. It's not ideal, but I should work for this project.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 10:20 AM on May 16, 2011

Maybe too late, but i just came accross this cool gardening project in Berlin, and they have a pretty impressive before/after right here
Made me remember your question.
good luck with your project!
posted by PardonMyFrench at 9:33 AM on May 18, 2011