about me

I live in San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia where gar­den­ing is a year-round oppor­tu­nity. When I’m not play­ing in the gar­den or work­ing at the com­puter or doing the day job thing I try to squeeze in doing art. Most of it’s photo-based work or out­right pho­tog­ra­phy. In what I do I spend a lot of time look­ing at and think­ing about the land­scape and our place in it.

Click here to see my portfolio.

Some favorite artists and pho­tog­ra­phers, depend­ing on my mood:

  • Robert Irwin
  • Mark Rothko
  • Harry Calla­han
  • Edward Weston

Some of my favorite places:

  • the desert South­west in gen­eral; some favorite spots:
    • Chaco Canyon
    • Chir­ic­ahua Mountains
    • Muley Point
    • Goose­necks of the San Juan River
  • Yosemite
  • the east­ern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains
  • the Cal­i­for­nia desert

Some of my favorite plants, depend­ing on my mood:

  • orchids
  • Rosa chi­nen­sis viridiflora
  • Stapelia gigan­tea
  • off­beat bulbs
  • salvias
  • aloes
  • Hedy­chium gardnerianum

November 24 2007 09:13 pm

23 Responses to “about me”

  1. Greg on 08 Dec 2008 at 5:59 pm #

    I just heard about the jet crash, but not many details. How far away from you was this? Are you okay…? Oh, I do hope so…be safe.

  2. lostlandscape on 08 Dec 2008 at 8:13 pm #

    Greg, thanks for your con­cern. I’m okay. It was about 2 miles from work. Within min­utes every­one was talk­ing about it and had the news feed on their com­put­ers. It was pretty tragic, all right. Not quite in the back yard, but close enough. The jet missed a high school by just a few houses, so it def­i­nitely could have been way worse–but how do you tell that to the guy who lost most of his fam­ily while he was at work?

    The price of life near the run­way, I guess. But there’s stuff fly­ing every­where you look. You just trust that what’s up there will stay there.

  3. Ruth on 10 Mar 2009 at 4:13 am #

    I’m so pleased to have found your inter­est­ing site.
    I was won­der­ing what equip­ment you use to pho­to­graph gar­den plants. What could you rec­om­mend for close up pho­tog­ra­phy of plants?
    Being Aus­tralian I was delighted to see your seg­ment on Euca­lypts. My state of Vic­to­ria recently had some dev­as­tat­ing bush­fires which burnt through thou­sands of acres of nat­ural euca­lypt forests. Loss of human life and wild life has been dis­tress­ing. We have had drought con­di­tions for 10–12 years. In Mel­bourne we can water our gar­dens twice a week for 2 hours at a time. I think San Diego is warmer than Melbourne…we can grow apri­cots and apples! I’m look­ing for­ward to explor­ing your site fur­ther, thanks again.

  4. lostlandscape on 10 Mar 2009 at 6:59 am #

    Hi Ruth,
    Glad you found me a hemi­sphere away and stopped by! News of your fires have cer­tainly been in our press, and I think all of us in sim­i­lar flam­ma­ble sit­u­a­tions can com­mis­er­ate with the events in Victoria.

    I was plan­ning to do a series of posts some­day soon on gar­den pho­tog­ra­phy, includ­ing equip­ment to use. But until I orga­nize my thoughts bet­ter, I can tell you that I use a Canon Rebel XTI for almost all the gar­den images that appear in my blog. This is a 10.1 megapixel dig­i­tal sin­gle lens reflex, mean­ing that you see through the viewfinder what will reg­is­ter on the mem­ory card. The cam­era has inter­change­able lenses, though quite frankly on almost all occa­sions I use the stock, inex­pen­sive 18-55mm zoom that comes with the basic kit. This lens can focus quite close. The few images I’ve shown with extreme close­ups were done with a ded­i­cated 100mm macro lens. I hope that helps, and feel free to ask me any fur­ther ques­tions you might have.

  5. Alice Joyce on 27 Apr 2009 at 4:05 pm #

    Hello James,
    I tried to add you to my tech­no­rati favorites, but no luck.
    Do you know what I need to do to pull up your blog there? Does it need to be your exact blog address?
    Also, can I read/include your blog in my google reader?
    Or is it not com­pat­i­ble?
    Thanks,
    Alice

  6. lostlandscape on 27 Apr 2009 at 6:42 pm #

    Hi Alice, I added the Add to Tech­no­rati but­ton to my side­bar though I did have the plain text link to them on my blog links. Let me know if you try again and can’t make them work–that’s always good to know so that I can see if there’s some­thing else I need to look into. (I was able to both add my blog and yours to my Tech­no­rati favorites.) I also acti­vated Tech­no­rati on my book­mark wid­get that allows users to book­mark indi­vid­ual posts.

  7. Elizabeth on 22 Jun 2009 at 2:03 pm #

    Hi there. I work for the San Diego River Park Foun­da­tion. We are a non-profit group work­ing to pre­serve land in the river’s head­wa­ters (as well as cre­ate a river-long park sys­tem). I just love your photo from April ’09 “Engle­mann Oak at Santa Ysabel Pre­serve”, it is so beau­ti­ful and cap­tures that area so won­der­fully! Would it be alright with you if we used the photo in one of our edu­ca­tional brochures I am work­ing on? We would really appre­ci­ate it!

    Thanks much,
    Elizabeth

  8. lostlandscape on 22 Jun 2009 at 7:12 pm #

    Eliz­a­beth, I’d be hon­ored. I’ve dropped you a note at your email.

  9. The Galloping Gardener on 25 Jun 2009 at 11:54 pm #

    This is a great web­site and I’d like to know more about gar­dens in San Diego area — see you’ve just signed up to fol­low my blog, but would be really grate­ful if you’d email me (details on my info page) so that I can get in touch. Thanks

  10. crix on 21 Jul 2009 at 1:05 am #

    Hi! I just found this blog and I love it. If you don’t mind I’ll fol­low it
    Big hug

  11. Faye on 14 Aug 2009 at 1:24 am #

    Hi, Just stum­bled on your blog while research­ing Anto­nio Gaudi. Being an Artist and Land­scape Gar­dener, you’ve inspired me to start blog­ging as I love how you’ve put your pas­sions together on yours. It all feels so famil­iar to me. My envi­ron­ment is very unique to Aus­tralia as it’s sub­trop­i­cal rain­for­est. Liv­ing in a high con­ser­va­tion area sur­rounded by 3 national parks on a 37 acre plot you can be sure that I’ve been busy in the gar­den. An inter­est­ing ele­ment to gar­den­ing here is that you can grow any­thing almost any­time of year. So the scope is enor­mous. One per­cent of the Aus­tralian con­ti­nent is made up of rain­for­est. We are the wettest part of a dry con­ti­nent. The area was formed by ancient vol­canos and is in the north­ern part NSW. near Byron Bay. Just wanted to thank you for inspir­ing me.
    All the best,
    Faye

  12. lostlandscape on 14 Aug 2009 at 5:46 am #

    Faye,
    Your sur­round­ings sound stun­ning! I’d be thrilled to have 37 acres to plant almost any­where on earth, and your loca­tion sounds like it’d be an espe­cially reward­ing one to work with. My own cli­mate lets me grow a wide palette of plants, though many require doses of addi­tional water. Still, I end up cov­et­ing a num­ber of plants that have no chance of suc­ceed­ing here. Please let me know more about your blog once you get it going. I’d love to fol­low the progress of your landscape.

  13. Jeff on 27 Oct 2009 at 8:38 pm #

    I agree with you choice of Robert Irwin. His Process of Abstrac­tion has helped me immensely in devel­op­ing design con­cepts in land­scape archi­tec­ture. That process though can be applied to just about to anything.

  14. Sandy Gillis on 09 Nov 2009 at 12:37 pm #

    Fab­u­lous blog. Thank you for being so gen­er­ous with your eye, with color, with your love of plants and design. Very inspiring.

  15. Larry Carpenter on 16 Feb 2010 at 7:44 pm #

    Hi,
    I love your site. I am writ­ing to ask per­mis­sion to use one of your pho­tos in a free hand­out at a do-it-yourself, “Build a Bird and But­ter­fly Water Source sur­rounded by Native Plants…” type demon­stra­tion at a nurs­ery in North San Diego County. I didn’t intend to post this to your blog, but don’t know how to e-mail you directly.
    Your aster (lessin­gia filagini­fo­lia cal­i­for­nica) pho­tos are great and would be help­ful. If you pre­fer not allow­ing it, I under­stand and apol­o­gize for tak­ing up blog space.

    Thank you,
    larryc

  16. Jill on 09 Sep 2010 at 9:00 pm #

    Hi Greg,

    Your web­site is amazing.

    Would like to invite you over to tour 1/2 acre of your taste in plants and gar­den­ing (have sys­tem­at­i­cally removed lawn over the past 15 years and land­scape still looks lush and East Coast. Would also like to share ideas.

    I gar­den every morn­ing between 9am — 12noon. 7 min­utes from down­town San Diego.

  17. lostlandscape on 12 Sep 2010 at 8:40 pm #

    Hi Jill–
    Thanks for the invite. Your gar­den sounds great and I’d be inter­ested in see­ing it. I’m going to be under­wa­ter with projects for a cou­ple weeks, but after that might be great. I always learn things from other people’s gardens!

  18. Scott on 17 Oct 2010 at 7:01 pm #

    Hi,
    I’m won­der­ing why some or many peo­ple with land­scape related web­sites, in the San Diego region for exam­ple, don’t have a pic­ture of them­selves on their own site?

  19. Jennifer on 18 Nov 2010 at 5:12 pm #

    Hi!
    Love your site. As an artist and gar­dener and nature lover it was real fun to look at all your great pic­tures. Here’s our on line port­fo­lio if you’d like to see what we do click on the nature folder for plant stuff made out of glass.
    Cheers!
    Jennifer

  20. reuben on 26 Feb 2011 at 5:46 am #

    Hello, I’ve only just now found your blog but am entranced… I’m an artist/gardener/blogger/designer in River­side. I work in LA and am an art direc­tor for the LATimes. My blog is ranchoreubidoux.wordpress.com

    I’m look­ing for­ward to reading-back your posts but I love it already! Thanks, Reuben

  21. lostlandscape on 26 Feb 2011 at 11:09 pm #

    Hi Reuben, thanks for your com­ments and for stop­ping by the blog! I used to com­mute back and forth past the Mt. Rubidoux area on my way to school many years ago and am look­ing for­ward to spend­ing more time at your blog to revisit the area as well as all the other places you’re blog­ging about…

  22. Scott on 23 Apr 2011 at 7:29 am #

    Hi James,

    I really appre­ci­ate your blog. I was able to iden­tify from your site two plants that I didn’t know the i.d. names that I was search­ing for. One, the local non-native Aspho­delus fis­tu­lo­sus, which is how I found your site. And the other, Rosa minu­ti­fo­lia, which I ‘dis­cov­ered’ for myself last fall on the north side of 905 in Otay Mesa area by the con­dos where the Berg­e­ro­cac­tus and ver­nal pools are. When I was on your site yes­ter­day, I rec­og­nized that to be the plant you had a lit­tle expose about, though I wasn’t even look­ing for it, — mis­sion accomplished.

    Very impres­sive efforts and pas­sion with what you’re doing with your plant/habitat pas­sions and with this blog,… and just as a hobby too, appar­ently. My good­ness. And yes, it’s very much appreciated.

  23. lostlandscape on 25 Apr 2011 at 7:12 pm #

    Scott, I’m glad you found the blog and found it help­ful! I’ve been mean­ing to see if I could find the local stands of R. minu­ti­fo­lia. I thought it was some­where around where you’ve described but only had a gen­eral idea, but you’ve prob­a­bly saved me a few hours of futile explo­ration. Gosh, they might even be in bloom now…

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