My One Sentence

This book is about .

More from Wesley Verhoeve, 248 ¤ The Hardest Part of Making a Book:

After thinking through your area of interest and your desired limitations, we bring it together into a one sentence description of what your project is about.

This book is about .

The best book concepts sound almost embarrassingly simple when you say them out loud. That simplicity isn’t a weakness. It means you know what you’re making and it’s easy to explain it to others.

My start is obvious and very simple. This book is about flowers.

But then, I need to add context and constraints. The book will not be a series of floral bouquets; it will not be about flower arranging. It will not be an educational or illustrative book. It will not focus on the methods of growing or harvesting flowers. It will not categorize flowers by season or zone. It will not label flowers by name, neither common nor scientific.

My one sentence will sound something like this:

A florilegium (anthology) of flowers, gathered from small flower farms in rural Virginia, celebrating the way flowers bring us to our senses.

My one sentence will be revised as go along, but this is a good start.

Patterns

I don’t know how it is that I am only just now discovering Process ¤ On Photography, by Wesley Verhoeve, but I am thoroughly enjoying his Sunday newsletters. Today’s post, The Hardest Part of Making a Book, presents the first step in creating a photo book. Wesley’s suggestions ring true for me, and follow the exact pattern that I use in determining where to head next with my creative work.

Take a look at the last two years of your photos and don’t focus on just your best shots. Look for what you keep coming back to. What subject, what kind of light, what kind of person, what time of day. What is the thing you photograph over and over without anyone asking you to? That’s a pattern.

…

Patterns in your photos aren’t random. They are the moments and shapes of what you care about. That’s your book. The thing you care to notice and document and, I would argue, that deserves to be shared. 

Photography in an Orchard

I LOVE orchards. So much so that I have a giant photograph from an apple orchard in my dining room. This is, in fact, not one of my pictures, but one made by a photographer whose work I admire, Kara Rosenlund. Her version is called Country Apples, and you can see it here. The print was a huge splurge, an early gift from my husband for our 45th wedding anniversary next month.

Sentry Peaches, Grelen Gardens, Somerset, Virginia | June 2026

Plums, Grelen Gardens, Somerset, Virginia | June 2026

Taking pictures in an orchard is challenging. At least for me. And yet still worth the work. I love being in the orchard. I love the smell of almost ripe fruit, the rolling terrain, the bees. I love the stickiness of the fruit. The warmth of summer breezes. I love the mess of abundance, but it is hard to photograph.

Here are the problems.

  1. The orchard is very green. I mean like overwhelmingly green, and my digital camera does an awful job at handling greens. Too yellow, too bright.

  2. The light in the orchard is almost always dappled. And while this is a magical light to be in, it is hard to record. Too much contrast.

  3. The orchard is messy in the way that nature is often messy. Chaotic with branches crossing one another, dead wood, rotten fruit. I have nothing against mess or decay, I just wish it would line itself up in an artistic fashion.

  4. Everything looks gorgeous. Lush. Textured. Like a slowly moving still life scene. And yet nothing seems to photograph as it looks to the human eye.

  5. The light is often bright, and this means the LCD screen is pretty much worthless for evaluating pictures as I go. It feels a lot like film photography, where I make an educated guess as to camera settings. And then hope for the best.

Unfortunately, I do not have easy answers to any of these problem. But I keep trying. The two images I am sharing here actually kind of hurt my eyes. Something does not seem right, but they are the best I can do for now. And sharing them is a low-stakes way to learn and make my way forward.

Staying Creatively Healthy

I’m sharing two of my favorite tips for staying creatively healthy from Aayushi Thakkar, author of Milk & Cookies (check out her post for all 15 tips).

2.make before you judge.
creative health suffers when the editor gets to the room before the maker. let the first version be clumsy or take the imperfect photo. judgment has a job, but it should not be the first person invited to the table.

10. keep a “done badly” version.
perfection makes creativity fragile. give yourself permission to create a version that is intentionally rough. this removes the pressure to make something good immediately and gives you material to work with. a bad version is much easier to improve than a beautiful idea that never leaves your head but eventually leaves your life.