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PHOTOGRAPHY AND CONTEMPORARY BOTANICAL ILLUSTRATION Niki Simpson and Peter G. Barnes Summary. New applications for photography in the scientific illustration of plants are offered by digital image manipulation, but have, to date, been little exploited. The evolving role of photography in botanical illustration is discussed, with particular emphasis on recently developed techniques of digitally created composite illustrations, their benefits and the potential of such images for further development. The technique is seen as a natural development of the composite watercolour or line illustrations that are familiar to all botanists.

The tradition of botanical illustration can be traced back through many centuries, and has been comprehensively discussed elsewhere, for example, in Blunt and Stearn (1994). Watercolour and line illustrations of plants most often show a single specimen. However, there is also a long tradition of composite illustrations which include various details, such as enlargements, sections and dissections, on the same page. A range of examples can be seen in Sowerby’s English Botany, the composite colour lithographs in Miyabe & Kudo (1986), and the detailed line-drawings in Ross-Craig’s Drawings of British Plants (1948–73) will be familiar to most British botanists. The coloured plates of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine have, since 1935, been accompanied by separate composite line drawings showing details and dissections. Many different techniques have been used, from pen and ink line drawings to watercolour, gouache and oil paints and, with the advent of printing, additional processes have been developed in order to represent these original works in the printed medium. These printing techniques range from woodcuts through wood and copper engravings, lithographs to the contemporary techniques of half-tone, full-colour, and most recently of all digital, printing; the three last, of course, being equally appropriate for the reproduction of drawings and paintings as well as photographs. In other words, botanical illustration has, since its beginnings, kept pace with technological change. THE USE OF PHOTOGRAPHY FOR BOTANICAL ILLUSTRATION By comparison the technology of photography is a relatively recent development, but like botanical illustration, it too has evolved. Since its beginnings in the early 1800s, photographs have featured plants prominently as subject matter and, increasingly, since photographs 258

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have become more available, botanical artists working direct from dried pressed herbarium material have used photographs as visual aids. Similarly many contemporary artists painting fresh material take their own photographs as a quick record and precaution against the plant suddenly wilting or losing colour, before there is time to get those features recorded on paper. A surprising number of interesting and beautiful examples of early botanical photographs exist, and these show the evolution of photographic techniques directly relevant to the creation of botanical illustrations, rather than as painters’ aids. Cyanotypes and ‘sun pictures’, were the earliest types, pre-dating use of the camera, and are particularly relevant in that, in laying the subject on light-sensitive material, the plant parts were arranged and the first photographic botanical compositions were created. While the botanical information was necessarily limited to the general shape of plant parts and gave no indication of colour or threedimensional form, wonderful detail was achieved, for example, with the veining in leaves. Indeed the first book produced entirely by photographic methods appeared in parts from 1843, and was a botanical work, reproduced by the cyanotype (blueprint) process invented by Sir John Herschel. Entitled British Algae – cyanotype impressions, it was created by Anna Atkins (1799–1871) and consisted of over 200 plates of seaweeds. Fox Talbot’s first photographic images, or ‘photogenic drawings’, included the first photomicrographs as well as images of flowers and leaves, both fresh and dried herbarium material. ‘…the object which would take the most skilful artist days or weeks of labour to trace or copy, is effected by the boundless powers of natural chemistry in the space of a few seconds’. (Talbot, 1839). John Dillwyn Llewellyn, active photographic experimenter at this time, used both Fox Talbot’s techniques and, later, daguerreotypes. Several of Llewellyn’s surviving early images show plants, and Fox Talbot considered him to be the first botanical photographer. (Leggat, 1997). The advantages of the speed of capture and of the accuracy and detail of the images were readily apparent, but there was, even then, also recognition of the fact that further accurate detail could be realised on enlargement, as expressed by Edgar Allan Poe (1840) when he wrote of the daguerreotype, ‘For, in truth, the daguerreotyped plate is … infinitely more accurate in its representation than any painting by © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008.

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human hands. If we examine the work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear – but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented. The variations of shade and the gradations of both linear and aerial perspective are those of truth itself in the supremeness of its perfection’. The new techniques of photography naturally led to the development of new printing processes by which photographs could be reproduced. Initially, photography was used indirectly, for example, the illustrations in the fourth edition of The Fern Paradise (Heath, 1878) were engravings produced from photographs. Previously, his book, The Fern World, (Heath, 1877) used photolithographs. These were colour illustrations and were ‘printed from photographs of fronds collected and grouped by himself’ and he was of the opinion that ‘the best drawing is frequently but a poor imitation of Nature. By bringing the marvellous and beautiful process of photography into requisition, it has been possible to copy the very lines of Nature herself.’ In both these methods, the photography involved composition of the plant material and resulted in excellent illustrations, though again these had limitations as botanical descriptions. In the latter the photography was, of course, monochrome and the colour was added manually by the lithographer, and was hence not realistic by today’s standards. Early photography, being monochrome, was, in terms of the colour information about a plant, a retrograde step. However, the turn of century brought with it the first successful colour photography, although the early colour results could be variable and fugitive. Of note though is Coventry’s Wild Flowers of Kashmir (1923–30) which contains illustrations which are ‘reproductions from direct colour photographs of freshly gathered specimens taken on Lumière’s autochrome plates’. The plant material was photographed laid on a (mostly) white background, and in the reproduction of the images, the background around the plant has been partially cut away giving a slightly shaded background immediately around the specimen. Interestingly, some images include both flower and fruit within a single plate, though this of course was only possible for plants where both parts occur at the same time. The material has been attractively arranged, but the shadows obscure some of the detail. Later images, created by Karl Blossfeldt (1935), in Germany, were taken for artistic rather than botanical purposes, but his exploration 260

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of plant structure with close-up photography has a direct bearing on botanical illustration. Information about the whole plant is generally absent and colour is lacking, but the attention to the fine detail of plant structure and symmetry is directly relevant to modern anatomical photography of sections, dissections and of small diagnostic parts. The exhibition of Lilian Snelling’s botanical art at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, in 2007, showed examples of the use of photography within a botanical institution in the first half of the 20th century. Robert Moyes Adam, photographer at the Garden between 1914 and 1949, created close-up photographs specifically of anatomical parts, dissections and herbarium specimens for its Director, Sir Isaac Bayley Balfour, and sometimes of the actual plants that Snelling painted. However, despite later developments in photography, such as improved lenses, macro-photography and photomicrography, few photographic examples of composite plant portraits have been found in more recent literature. In The Art of Botanical Illustration (Blunt and Stearn, 1994) there is a an emphasis on the merit of artwork over photography and significantly, the term ‘photography’ is not included in its index, though there is a very brief discussion in his chapter on the twentieth century where Stearn notes that colour photography is increasingly important and the work of Blossfeldt gets the briefest of mentions. A year later, Saunders (1995), in her selection of examples of botanical illustrations held in the V&A in London, mentions the use of photography in both horticultural literature and field guides. Just one modern photographic image is included, that being an example from the pioneering work of Roger Phillips in his important series of photographic field guides, the first of which was Wildflowers of Britain, published in 1977. Yet with Brent Elliott (1996) we find the first mention of the future importance of digital imagery specifically for botanical illustration. In assessing Phillips’ work, Elliott viewed it as ‘pioneering the photographic counterpart to the artist’s composite plate’. He was aware then that image manipulation was becoming a reality and, with foresight, he goes on to state boldly that ‘we should not underestimate the potential of photography’ for botanical illustration. In recent times, botanical photography has mostly been confined to single images showing habit, habitat or individual anatomical © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008.

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details of a plant. For these purposes, photographs are, of course, excellent and are now the mainstay of most botanical field guides. So it can be seen that, although photography was developed in the first half of the 19th century, and enthusiastically taken up well before the end of that century, it has seldom featured significantly in the corpus of formal, scientific botanical plant portraiture. There are various reasons for this, one often put forward being the notion that a photograph merely records one individual which may or not be representative of a population. By contrast, it has been said that a good artist can convey an accurate, generalised impression of a plant in a way that a photograph can not. Whilst there may be some truth in this, it is not an insuperable problem, provided attention is given to selecting material characteristic of the plant being illustrated. Phillips’ view (1977) is that ‘a photograph gives a better instant ‘feel’ of a specimen’ but one suspects that an elitist feeling that photography is ‘cheating’ compared to drawing and painting may also be a factor. The main, well documented, reasons that underlie the continuation of botanical painting to the present day are summed up by Saunders (1995): ‘…photography is even now unable to fulfil all the needs of the botanist; botanical draughtsmanship survives as a distinct discipline because it has the flexibility to focus, analyze and dissect its subject, and to combine disparate parts in a clearly intelligible design’. Since this is largely still the current opinion amongst botanists and botanical artists alike, these aspects deserve more attention, but we must first consider the arrival of contemporary digital photography and what we mean by ‘digitally created composite images’. CONTEMPORARY DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY The truly exciting step forward, enabling the creation of sophisticated composite images, has been the arrival and rapid development of digital imaging technology over recent years. The conventional film camera has been replaced by a digital camera and a memory card replaces the silver halide film. Photography, by enabling a significantly increased amount of visual data capture, and by the objective nature of such data acquisition, has always had great potential for use in botanical illustration, but has not been fully exploited, at least in published botanical work. We believe that the techniques discussed here offer valuable new possibilities for the future of botanical illustration. 262

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Fig. 1. Pimpinella saxifraga L. Scanner composition by Liz McDonnell/Natural England.

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We are aware of various approaches to the use of digital imaging in the field of botanical illustration. Perhaps the most basic approach is the use of a slide scanner simply to convert a transparency into an electronic file, which can then be manipulated to a degree. Phillips & Rix (2002) take this approach of using scanned film images very much further: parts have been cleaned of spurious backgrounds, colours have been adjusted, scale information added and the parts then combined with the text to make a highly attractive and informative page. A step up from scanning transparencies is to use a flatbed scanner directly to capture an image of one or more plant parts. This method has the inherent advantage that all images are scanned at the same scale and in constant lighting conditions. The only manipulation is the arrangement of the plant parts on the scanner bed and the single image file is considered the end-product (see Fig. 1). Done with a good ‘eye’ for design, the result can be both attractive and scientifically valid, but it is inevitably limited in the botanical detail shown. Metzing (2004) has used a flatbed scanner effectively to create detailed images of cactus flowers and points out some of the advantages of scanning over photography with a camera and Koltnow (2005) shows how scanner images have been used to illustrate species of Salvia. This technique can then be further developed by manipulation of the scanned image. Peterson (2005) terms such images as ‘scanographs’. Plant parts are scanned separately, each isolated from its background and then re-composed on to a new, often coloured, background with any desired text. The arrival of high quality digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras opens up the possibilities very much further. The constraint of the limited size of the scanner bed is removed, and the options for macro-photography and photomicrography extend the potential much further. It is generally accepted that the output quality from such cameras is now close to matching that of their film equivalents. Just as with a scanner, the results can be assessed immediately, and re-taken if necessary. In contrast to the use of a scanner, there is no necessity to lay the material on a horizontal surface or for the material to be limited in depth in order to fit under the scanner lid. The fact that there is no film cost inevitably means that the photographer feels freer to take more photographs, increasing the likelihood of achieving high quality results. 264

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A further technique used is the compilation of a composite illustration from a selection of digital photographs all taken against the same background (usually white or black) and with no isolation of the parts from their original backgrounds, so that when the individual photographs are placed adjacent to one another, or on a background of the same colour, the resulting composite gives an apparently seamless overall background. A look at the images created by Godet (1984) using a black background by is recommended. Lüth’s work on Bryophytes, in fascicle 1, first edition (2004) demonstrates simple composite images in the form of a collage of single images arranged on top of a coloured background. OUR APPROACH TO DIGITAL COMPOSITE IMAGES What we mean by the term ‘digitally created composite illustration’ is this: a digitally created plant portrait showing the diagnostic and characteristic features of the taxon, compiled on a white background. It should be combined in a botanically logical, yet attractive, composition with all parts shown to an appropriate scale and with all the component parts shown without confusing or obscuring shadows. An important consideration is that the majority of parts are completely isolated from any background, and hence are separately moveable and scalable. The illustration is largely, but not necessarily completely, based on digital photography, since digital versions of other illustrative material can readily be included. Additional information, such as any textual component of title block, lettering of parts, and other information relating to the taxon, may be included to suit requirement. The steps used to create such digital composite illustrations can be found in the Appendix. POST-PROCESSING One of the major advantages of digital imaging is the relative ease with which images can be edited using a wide range of highly sophisticated software tools. Even the most basic image-editing software allows simple cropping, masking, adjustment of brightness, contrast and colour balance, but more powerful programs take the possibilities for further adjustment to a new level. In turn, this enables a new approach to image creation, most notably in the creation of composite images. Above all, plant parts captured at different times of the year can each be isolated from their photographic © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008.

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Fig. 2. Linum usitatissimum L. A: lower portion of stem including root system; B: top portion of stem with opening flower ; C: bud; D: top portion of flowering stem with buds; E: single flower with front petal removed; F: flower with all petals and calyx removed; G: 2 views of stamen; H: gynoecium; J: petal; K: sepal; L: calyx; M: flower, side view; N: flower, from above; P: leaf, upper surface; Q: leaf, lower surface; R: fruit, side view; S: section through developing fruit; T: top portion of fruiting stem; U: seeds. Created by N. Simpson.

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backgrounds and juxtaposed within a single composition, just as in a traditional botanical plate. A further advantage is the possibility of incorporating digital versions of other illustrative media within a composite illustration, resulting in works of digital mixed media. Any combination of photographs, manipulated photographs, photomicrographs, scanning electron micrographs, digital line drawings and artwork created using a digital pen and tablet, line work created digitally from photographs, direct flatbed scans of plant material, as well as scanned versions of traditional line or watercolour work, can all be the raw materials. An incidental benefit of digital images arises from their use of ‘metadata’. This is textual data about the image, and actually stored within the image itself. Metadata may include useful camera-generated (EXIF) data such as date, exposure and lens details, but also many user-editable fields, including title, caption, copyright information, the incorporation of GPS data (geoencoding), and many others which are of potential value to botanists, as well as artists. FOCUS: THE THIRD DIMENSION The manipulation of digital images allows some special ‘effects’ which can be mentioned in more detail. Sharp images are essential; by aiming for optimum focussing for each plant part, the composite image achieves a similar ‘all parts in focus’ effect to that found in botanical painting. To this end ‘image-stacking’ can be a valuable technique in certain circumstances. Anyone who has taken close-up photographs, regardless of subject, is quickly aware of the very limited depth of focus. Stopping down the lens aperture increases the depth of focus, but only to a limited extent, and soon leads to a degraded image because of the effects of diffraction at small apertures. Photography through the light microscope, even at very low powers, exacerbates the effect, especially as there is no option to ‘stop-down’ for increased depth of focus. Image stacking software can be used to blend, largely automatically, the in-focus parts of a series of images of the same plant part (‘frames’), to output an image with far greater depth of focus than would otherwise be possible. The examples here show low power photomicrographs of a nettle flower, Urtica dioica; the first (fig. 3 a) being a single photograph and the second (fig. 3 b) being an image © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008.

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Fig. 3. Male flower of Urtica dioica L. (a. above) single image; (b. below) stacked image of 8 frames. Created by Peter Barnes.

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derived from a stack of 18 frames. The minute depth of focus in the photomicrograph is all too obvious; the stacked image gives an impressive improvement. The technique must be used with some care, as it is easy to introduce artefacts or, if too few image frames are used, to have an out of focus zone or zones. Nevertheless, it is a very powerful technique, and one which allows the photographer to emulate the ‘infinite’ depth of focus achieved by a watercolour illustrator. McCormack (2006) discusses image-stacking in greater detail. ISOLATION OF PARTS AND SHADOWS Shadows can be confusing and may obscure important detail. For clarity as well as ease of isolating the plant from its background, shadows need to be reduced to a minimum. The aim in photographing the parts is to reduce both the shadows cast on the plant parts and those cast by the plant on to the backdrop. This can be achieved by photographing material in even and diffused lighting, such as the natural light of a bright day, but taking care to avoid photography in strong sunlight, unless a diffuser is used. SCALES, JOINING AND MENDING Photographs incorporating scales to show the size of plants or their anatomical parts have been used for many years, whether by using an object of known size, such as a coin, ×1, or scale bars, all of which are well used conventions. For readily scalable digital composite illustrations, scale bars are preferable, so that at whatever size the image is viewed, the scale bar is always automatically and accurately rescaled. Very large subjects can be photographed in sections and the resulting photographs ‘stitched’ together, with great accuracy, to produce a single large, high quality image. Many watercolour illustrators carefully ‘mend’ damaged parts of the plant specimen in the course of their work. This is also possible with digital images, which offer the possibility of also saving an un-retouched copy of the photograph. Simpson (2005) shows an example of mending directly from photographs, using the example of a Lathraea clandestina leaf, while graphic artists, such as Steve Buchanan working in the US, have created highly realistic computer-generated plant illustrations, which serve to show the extensive scope available for such mending of parts, should the situation require it. © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008.

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LAYERING Overlap is a useful tool employed by traditional artists for many years, and developed from the need to squeeze in as much information as possible into the space available. Some of the illustrations of Ross-Craig (1948–73) for example, show this convention. It is equally valuable to the digital illustrator, who has the additional possibility of re-arranging, and even reversing, the overlap, such that the part hidden underneath can be brought in front. See Fig. 5, where overlap is used effectively to show a range of autumn colours in Liquidambar leaves. COLOUR Colour is traditionally considered, by botanists, to be secondary to plant structure as a distinguishing feature for the purpose of identification and hence the importance of detailed line drawings. Nevertheless, the accurate recording of colour has always been an important feature and indeed, it is noteworthy that Curtis’s Botanical Magazine has employed coloured illustrations since its establishment in 1787, and Desmond (1987) confirms that plates were coloured by hand until 1949. Compared to watercolour painting, photography can provide greater and more reproducible colour accuracy. A far greater amount of colour information can be very quickly recorded, as the image is made, than is possible for an artist to either observe or portray in a painting, whether painted at the time or later from a colour chart reference. Simpson (2005) showed the use of a ‘colour key’ within digital composite illustrations, to give colour references for the notable parts. This can be useful for illustrating cultivars, where colour can be diagnostic and to accompany herbarium specimens where colour may be lost on drying. For the colour recording in the examples shown, the colour-reference used was the RHS Colour Chart (1995 edition) which was created as a standard reference for recording colour in cultivated plants. Examples of a colour key can be seen in fig. 2 (Linum) and fig. 4 (Arum). The accuracy with which colour is recorded in the illustrations is dependent on having a fully colour-calibrated system, from the computer used for editing, to the subsequent processes of printing or, indeed, any computer on which the image may be viewed. 270

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Fig. 4. Composite images of Liquidambar styraciflua L. (above) and Arum maculatum L. (below), Created by Niki Simpson.

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BACKGROUNDS There are two types of background to note; the background against which the plant parts are photographed and the background against which the final composition is compiled. For the former, the conventional background for close-up photography has been black. Most often this is black cloth, usually velvet for its light absorbing qualities. Using black overcomes the problem of confusing shadows cast on the background and dramatic results can be obtained, especially for showing up pale and delicate plant parts, photographed at close range. However, for use within such composites, any background which is relatively easy to remove from around the required plant part is suitable to use. A plain background has been found by the authors to be best, though white parts photographed against a white background make no more sense than very dark parts against a black background. For very pale or translucent parts a neutral mid-tone background is suggested. For the background on which to compile the component parts into the digital composite, the convention of a white background is borrowed from traditional botanical artwork, with the end result that the plant parts are portrayed positively against white, which is after all how we perceive plants and how we instinctively expect to see them in illustrations. The use of isolated photographic parts displayed on a white background has been much used by the publisher, Dorling Kindersley, in educational publications, but never taken to what we see as its logical development, as a full botanical composite. FLEXIBILITY Digital techniques allow the easy rearrangement of the component images that make up the composite, to suit specific requirements, such as different page sizes and shapes, depending on the end product. A composite image produced for printing on an A4 page, for example, can readily be rearranged to fit a square format for a greetings card or a horizontal rectangle for viewing on a monitor. Individual image components can be omitted, perhaps for a children’s book, or new components added as material becomes available. Indeed as improved parts become available, they can be substituted, and the redundant part simply deleted at the touch of a button. Of immense benefit to the artist, is the fact that if a mistake is found, corrections do not entail starting the entire illustration all over again. 272

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The technique is thus highly versatile, offering a flexibility that is simply not available to the watercolour artist. For example, Simpson (2007a) shows the re-arrangement of parts to create a horizontal format version of an illustration, the use of individual parts at various scales, as well as how the information content of an illustration can be increased, by including a colour key, ‘time bar’ and symbols designed specifically for use in this type of digital composite illustration. Flexibility is one thing: it would be a mistake to suppose that it is a simple matter to produce a high-quality end-product. It requires considerable observation and attention to detail, much planning and research before starting, the eye of a botanist for selection of appropriate material, the eye of an artist to achieve an effective and attractive arrangement on the page, together with a competent photographic technique to produce satisfactory raw materials from which to start. Equally, it is by no means a rapid technique; the arrangement must be on the one hand botanically coherent and logical so that the image is both comprehensive and representative and, on the other aesthetically pleasing. The composite digital image may take as much time as, or more than, the equivalent watercolour illustration. (See Appendix for an idea of the time and effort involved). To date, few examples of composite digital botanical images have been published, but examples are given by Simpson (2005), Simpson (2007a), Simpson (2007b), Knees et al. (2007), and the latest work on the bryophytes of Germany by Lüth, fascicle 3 (2006) and fascicle 4 (2007). Bailes (2006) and Sander (2007) include early examples created in 2004 and 2005, of Ilex aquifolium (page 12) and the hybrid larch, Larix × marschlinsii, (plate 4) respectively. DRAWBACKS As with most techniques, there are some limitations and it is worth setting out the drawbacks of which we are aware. There will be situations in which photography-based work, for some reason, cannot adequately either capture or portray the required botanical information, for example, where illustrations are to be created from herbarium specimens. Good material is essential: it must be fresh and complete and above all typical of the taxon to be illustrated; it should also be reasonably photogenic. A limited amount of mending can be achieved, but largely incomplete or wilted material can not be © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008.

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‘revived’ as it might be by a watercolourist, so careful selection and preparation of material is all the more important. Generally speaking dissections are done simply so that parts can be viewed with a handlens or examined under a stereomicroscope, but producing results that are good enough for close-up photography or photomicrography, takes dissection to higher levels of planning, precision, patience, as well as speed, so that photography of the plant part is achieved before discolouration sets in. Some may suspect that talk of ‘manipulating images’ might lead to the introduction of falsehoods or other artefacts. This is of course quite possible, but no more so, and perhaps even less so, than with drawing or painting. In either case, one has to take the accuracy of the image on trust, though it is difficult to see any advantage to be gained by deliberately mis-representing the subject. The illustration of Linum usitatissimum (fig. 2) demonstrates the extent to which the visual photographic truth of a plant can be digitally recorded and depicted, where the only manipulation has been the isolation of parts from their backgrounds. More likely is the inadvertent omission or mis-representation of some detail. Hairy surfaces are notoriously difficult to represent in line drawings or paintings and may pose a problem in photography too. When digitally isolating an image from its background, it is not easy to retain an accurate representation of hairs overlapping the margin of a leaf or petal, for example. In general, it can be done, but it requires great care with lighting, background, and subsequent manipulation. In a few instances it may be necessary to photograph difficult image components against a darker, rather than a white background and for that part to retain its own individual background within the composite. (see example of part H in fig. 2, Linum). Equipment costs are in a different league from those of the watercolour illustrator. A good digital camera, preferably a digital single-lens reflex type with appropriate lenses and remote release cable, a sturdy tripod and/or a copying stand are the essentials. Add to that a fast computer with plenty of memory, together with a high quality, preferably calibrated, monitor and appropriate graphics software packages, capacious back-up facilities, and the costs become significant. With the desirability of periodic hardware and software upgrades, as well as associated IT support, maintenance and security, cost is a major deterrent to freelance digital illustration work. 274

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Fig. 5. Linum usitatissimum L. detail of fig. 2, rearranged. E: single flower with front petal removed; F: flower with all petals and calyx removed; J: petal; L: calyx; P: leaf, upper surface; T: top portion of fruiting stem. Created by N. Simpson.

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APPLICATION TO FIELD WORK Digital photography has brought considerable opportunities to field botany, especially in allowing many hundreds of photographs to be taken, capturing images of plant habits and habitats, as well as of anatomical close-up details of plants. Colour and form information can be recorded which otherwise would be lost on pressing and drying the material as herbarium specimens. While it can be seen that the techniques we have mentioned are more appropriate to the studio or laboratory than to the field, an effective record can be attempted in field conditions, and Miller (in Knees et al., 2007) has had success to this end, in compiling a composite image of Barleria samhanensis. While it may not be possible, for various reasons (for example, lack of suitable staging equipment, difficult lighting conditions, non-photogenic specimen, etc.) to photograph all the required diagnostic features on the spot, there is no reason why any such ‘elusive’ features should not be measured and sketched, and on return to base be redrawn (with reference to the herbarium specimen in the usual manner), scanned and then incorporated in the final digital composite illustration along with the photographic parts. TAKING IT FURTHER The compositing technique described here is highly appropriate to printed output, whether in the form of book or journal illustrations, greetings cards, fine art prints, etc. However, it is even better suited to on-line viewing and publication and this opens up further exciting possibilities in the form of interactivity. Some initial steps in this direction have been made with, for example, the trial ‘virtual book’ exhibited by Simpson in Berlin in 2007. Perhaps the greatest benefit of using digital images is the potential for the increased accessibility of botanical detail. In an appropriate software environment, provided the original image components are of sufficiently high resolution, ‘virtual magnifiers’ or localised zoom tools are readily added, allowing viewing of the image and hence plant parts at considerably enlarged scales. See fig. 3, showing partially enlarged portion of Linum plate. The additional possibilities of adding hypertext-type ‘hot-spot’ links to other data or images only serve to take botanical illustration to a new level. Envisaged links might lead, for example, to further images and related data, and to other relevant material on the internet. 276

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CONCLUSIONS The authors are aware of some reluctance to embrace digital media in botanical illustration, but it can be seen that the concept of illustrating plants in a digital composite manner is in many ways is not really new at all. It is simply an evolutionary step in botanical illustration, and also in botanical photography. In bringing both disciplines together, this new type of botanical illustration aims to combine the best of the tried and tested conventions of traditional illustration with the latest photographic and image processing technologies available, to produce highly detailed digital illustrations which meet the constraints imposed by the discipline of taxonomy and yet will also meet the requirements of the future. We see this as an approach of considerable value. This type of illustration can be used to supplement the traditional line-work used for the description of new taxa and also to supplement herbarium specimens. Indeed, the attainable detail and accuracy is such that the results may be referred to as ‘image specimens’. While this type of illustration cannot be said to be pure invention in the same way as a painting, it is still one person’s individual expression of the plant. It is simply the tool that has been upgraded; the paintbrush has been exchanged for the camera. In his Autobiographical Fragment, botanical artist Rory McEwen (1988) acknowledged that ‘The camera is the most powerful visual force of the twentieth century. It has affected and refined our vision, but it is, itself, still only a mechanism, a mirror for the mind.’ In the twenty-first century, the digital illustrator can explore the qualities of light rather than pigment, but all within the constraints of creating a highly accurate, informative and beautiful two-dimensional representation of the plant concerned. Photography allows the extension of human vision, and an increase in the quantity and quality of visual data captured. At the same time, digital imaging technology allows a significant advance in the communication of those data, in the form of visual scientific plant descriptions. With this first publication in the Curtis’s Botanical Magazine of a digitally created composite plant portrait, the authors are aware that the results will be judged in part by the print quality of a digital illustration converted for printing by the traditional 4-colour method, and, for those able to view the published article on-line, by the clarity of the much-reduced resolution of the digital file. It should be borne in mind that the original high resolution image is a very © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008.

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large file (approx. 49MB TIFF) and can be printed at up to A2 size or viewed on a high quality monitor, on which the displayed image can be enlarged to reveal detail not discernible in smaller versions. We make no apology for any less than perfect results in trialling these images at this stage, as this type of digitally created image looks to the future; to digital printing, interactivity and global access by a worldwide audience. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. We would like to thank the staff at both the Linnean Society library and the RHS Lindley Library (Wisley) for their help and, for permission to use her image, Liz McDonnell/Natural England for the scanner composition of Pimpinella saxifraga. We would also like to acknowledge the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust for funding training for Niki’s original 2003–2004 experimental digital botanical art project, without which this work would not have been developed. REFERENCES

Bailes, C. (2006). Hollies for Gardeners. Timber Press, Portland. Blossfeldt, K. (1935). Art Forms in Nature, Zwemmer, London. Blunt, W. & Stearn, W.T. (1994). The Art of Botanical Illustration. New Edition. Antique Collectors’ Club, London. Clebsch, B. (2005). Subtle Salvias for Summertime Shade. Pacific Horticulture 66(3): 22–26. Coventry, B.O. (1923-30). Wild Flowers of Kashmir. Series I – III.W. Thacker & Co., London. Desmond, Ray. (1987). A Celebration of Flowers. 200 years of Curtis’s Botanical Magazine. Collingridge, London Elliott, Brent. (1996). A question of image. The Garden. 121(8): 486–489. Godet, J.-D. & Neumann-Neudamm, J. (1984). Blüten – der einheimischen Baumund Straucharten. Arboris-Verlag, Bern. Heath, F.G. (1878). 4th edition. The Fern Paradise. George Routledge, London. Heath, F.G. (1877). The Fern World. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, London. Knees, S.G. Laser, S., Miller, A.G. & Patzelt, A. (2007). A new species of Barleria (Acanthaceae) from Oman. Edinburgh Journal of Botany 64(1): 107–112. Koltnow, J. (2005). A different kind of illustration: using a scanner to create flower images. Pacific Horticulture 66(3): 22–26. Leggat, Robert (1997). John Dillwyn Llewellyn. In http://www.rleggat.com/ photohistory/history/llewelyn.htm [accessed October 2007]. Lüth, Michael. Bildatlas der Moose Deutschlands. Fascicle 1(2004 to fascicle 4(2007). http://www.milueth.de/Moose/Bildatlas/atlas%20engl.htm. [accessed November 2007]. McCormack, John, (2006). Beatific vision. RPS Journal. 146(7): 326–329. McEwen, R. (1988). Autobiographical Fragment, in Rory McEwen, 1932-1982 The botanical paintings. Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.

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Metzing, D. (2004). A quick and easy method for documenting flower characters. Haseltonia. Yearbook of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America. 10: 30–37. Miyabe, K. & Kudo, Y. (1986). Icones of the essential forest trees of Hokkaido. [in Japanese; facsimile of 1925 edition]. Hokkaido University Press, Sapporo. Peterson, Terry W. (2005). Scanograph directions. http://npsnm.unm.edu/ photos/botscan.html [accessed October 2007] Phillips, Roger (1977). Wildflowers of Britain. Pan Books, London. Phillips, Roger & Rix, Martyn (2002). The Botanical Garden. Macmillan, London. Poe, Edgar Allan. (1840). The Daguerreotype. Alexander’s Weekly Messsenger. Ross-Craig, S. (1948-1973). Drawings of British Plants. Bell, London. Sander, H. et al. (2007). Hybrid larches in Tallinn. In Eesti Loodusmuuseumi Toid 5: 174–192. Tallinn. (in Estonian followed by an English summary). Saunders, G. (1995). Picturing Plants. Zwemmer in association with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Simpson, N. (2005). Botanical illustration goes digital. The Plantsman n.s. 4(4): 208–215. Simpson, N. (2007a). Digital diversity: a new approach to botanical illustration. (exhibition catalogue) N. Simpson, Guildford. Simpson, N. (2007b). Digital botanical illustrations. Daffodil, Snowdrop and Tulip Yearbook 2007-2008. in association with the Royal Horticultural Society. Talbot, H.F. (1839). Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing. Philosophical Magazine XIV 1839 quoted in Ward, J. & Stevenson, S. (1986). Printed Light. Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. The Royal Horticultural Society. (1995). 3rd edition. RHS Colour Chart. London.

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APPENDIX

The steps to create such digital composite illustrations are broadly as follows: 1. Research and plan the illustration, making appropriate drawings, notes, etc. 2. Locate a suitable plant specimen, confirm its identification and make arrangements to collect. 3. Photograph the plant and all the required diagnostic parts, including sections and dissections, with considered lighting angles, against suitable background and in such a way as to reduce shadows to a minimum. 4. Either take careful measurement notes or incorporate a scale into the photographs as appropriate, and take any colour references needed. 5. Download the photographs, assess, save and file those to be kept. 6. Study the photographs obtained and make a final selection of those parts which, in combination, show all the features required. 7. Re-take any poor or missing shots. 8. Stitch together images if necessary. 9. Where possible use unadulterated photographs in order to retain the full integrity of the botanical information. If essential, mend damaged areas, but manipulate and mend only as necessary, and always keep the full original photograph file for reference. 10. Isolate each part from its background to form a new “clipped” image. A variety of tools is now available to do this, such as colour replacers, edge-finders and background erasers. Use whichever tool suits the particular situation best and save each isolated part as a separate image from the original. 11. Decide on size and resolution of output of the final image and create the overall template for the illustration accordingly. 12. Arrange the selected parts into a unified composite illustration on a white background, saving it at each stage. Size and orient each part to give the optimum combination and emphasis to the illustration. 13. Re-visit the plant at later dates to capture details which occur at different times of the year and incorporate these later parts into the composition. 14. Enhance the clarity of any parts with digital artwork if necessary and digitise any other artwork, diagrams, etc. to be included and add to the composite. 15. Add scale bars in a consistent fashion for all parts shown and then any textual components, such as title/name, signature, copyright, etc. Letter or number the component parts as agreed with botanist, client or publisher and record caption information for these. 16. Add any other information, such as colour key, time-bar, provenance details such as accession number, collection number, map location, etc. 17. These stages complete the creation of the actual composite image, but there are a few more very important stages: the image needs to be checked thoroughly by both botanist and artist, any metadata required needs to be added in the image file and then lastly, the final version needs to be named, dated and saved. Most important of all is to create a back-up copy of the file.

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