Over the past five years, I’ve designed and built a flower garden in my back yard for the sole purpose of photographing it. More accurately, I scan my garden with a Photo Scanner. Similar to an SLR camera, the photo scanner uses a series of mirrors to reflect light to a photo sensor located behind a lens in the scanning platform. I stripped the device to its bare essentials and replaced the cathode fluorescent lamp with a more powerful bulb. The scanner is mounted to a tripod on its side, plugged into a laptop computer and powered by a lengthy extension cord. I take this equipment with me into the garden.

I use the re-purposed photo scanner as an improvised field camera, moving it close to the plants, and sometimes catching their stems, leaves and blossoms inside the scanner housing (the glass has been removed), causing an occasional digital glitch, a miniscule patch of neon color, or a peculiar blur. While the “photo-scanning” process involves no true depth of field because of the limited focal length of the scanner lens, the images that it yields possess both extreme flatness and great depth. The images are not manipulated or altered using Photoshop; the resulting colors are based on plant type, time of day and intensity of natural light.