California native plants's are seen with fresh eyes by photographer David Leaser

David Leaser was in elementary school when his parents first placed a Polaroid Swinger in his hand, and he’s had a camera at the ready ever since.

Other than a brief stint in the computer industry, the San Diego resident has made his living behind the lens. He has published several books, including “Palm Trees: A Story in Photographs” (Westwood Pacific Publishing), and his images are in galleries across the United States.

Over the past few years Leaser has become enamored of plants native to the Golden State, and he will share his passion, along with his photography secrets, in the talk, “Exploring the Beauty of Califoia’s Native Flora,” at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino April 14.

“I see it as inspiring others to do the same thing and knowing that everybody is going to have their own view of nature that is very different than mine,” Leaser said. “My work is going to have a certain look to it, and even if I teach you the exact same technique, you’re not going to have the same feel. I want everybody to be able to do this, and I want everybody to have this heightened appreciation for nature the way I have.”

Jim Folsom, director of the botanical gardens at the Huntington, said Leaser is a “meticulous observer, consummate artist, and dedicated plantsman, whose photographic studies take the viewer into a fresh encounter with plants and flowers.”

“It will be a great joy and revelation for people interested in Califoia’s flora that he has tued his talents to our native plants,” Folsom said.

The location of his talk is fitting, as an exhibit of paintings by Frederic Church at the Huntington inspired Leaser to travel the artist’s steps through South America with his camera. The jouey also gave him a new appreciation for the plants that made up the extensive landscapes he was known for photographing.

“Anybody, I think, can take beautiful photographs in the Amazon. It’s pristine, it’s beautiful. You can take an iPhone camera and get gorgeous photographs in the Amazon,” Leaser said. “But what if I can re-create that vision blown-up enormously where you can see these intimate, intricate details of these tiniest little flowers the size of your thumbnail? Blow them up to 4 feet across where you can see a view of nature you couldn’t see before.”

Back in the studio, Leaser began working with traditional macrophotography equipment, but it couldn’t keep up with the vision he had for the images. He leaed that NASA’s technology for the Mars rover mission was commercially available through Caegie Mellon University as the GigaPan, a computer system which allows photographers to stack and stitch images together for vivid detail. Leaser also found a robotic means to control his camera and lens, allowing him to get even closer to his subjects.

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This advanced technology is only one facet of Leaser’s process, as flowers are living things and change surprisingly rapidly. Blooms, like tulips, will tu towards the light, while other blossoms may droop and wilt. Leaser places the flower in his studio, focuses a light on it and then tus everything off, leaving it in blackness. There also caot be any windows open nor air conditioning ruing that might make the bloom move. He then takes 25-100 images of the flower, moving his camera over it slowly akin to an MRI.

“You have a subject that won’t sit still; you also have this equipment that has all these different moving parts where I have to use software that’s on my computer and the computer controls the camera,” Leaser said.

Leaser then goes through the images, sorting out the ones that are thoroughly in focus, and “stitches” them together on his computer to create one complete image of the bloom. Leaser studies the final result and, if it passes his inspection, he finishes the piece, enlarging the image so the intimate details of the flowers are easily seen.

“I’m hoping to show people these rare and exotic things that they’ve never seen before or even the mundane things in a way that they’ve never seen them,” Leaser said.

Leaser’s interest in blooms led to an appreciation for rare and endangered flowers, as well as blooms close to home.

“Here in our own backyard, the hills used to be covered with wildflowers. In fact, the early settlers said that when they came to Califoia, they could see flowers for miles, and it’s almost gone,” Leaser said. “I thought, ‘Why don’t I try to give a heightened appreciation for them?’u2009”

In addition to sharing the secrets of his craft, Leaser wants to spread his admiration for the beauty of nature, so he offers free ecards of some of his photos on his website, www.davidleaser.com.