Bill Valavanis' famous Full moon maple in all its glory

I’ve been meaning to knock your socks off (do people still say that?) with these photos of Bill’s Brilliant back yard for a few days now, but wanted to get all the fact straight first. Turns out time isn’t on my side so far this week, so I’ll just put the photos up as I found them on Bill’s fb timeline. If you want more info, feel free to follow the link.
Continued below…

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Here’s a note Bill sent us the other day … “Both Alan (Alan Adair) and I have not adjusted the color in the photos. They are actually that bright! and really glow in the right light. It took both of us 3 hours of moving trees around for the overall garden shot. We call it “painting with bonsai”. I’m up on the ladder and can’t clearly see a tree, so it must be moved. Then we need more yellow here and red over there. It all takes time, but worth it. From Friday to Sunday should actually bring out the peak color in my garden. But there are still about a half dozen maples which will not peak for some time. There are two shishigashira maples which were beginning to peak and should be stunning. After we take the formal garden photos we will bring other individual trees into to be photographed. Then, if we have time and energy will bring some in for tokonoma shots. As you well know, everything takes time which people do not realize. Look at all the time Joe takes to capture the beauty of each tree in the exhibition for the album. He spends hours on each photo to get the exact color correct, after shooting the tree. NOBODY even sees the subtle changes, only Joe sees them. Teaching color reproduction for 35 year trains your eye……”

Here's a couple of those albums Bill mentions (just above) that were shot by Joe Noga, bonsai photographer extraordanaire. Both are available at Stone Lantern

We did get the facts on this one. Here's what Bill wrote... "This a bust of Yugi Yoshimura, a bonsai pioneer in America, and teacher to William N. Valavanis. Next to him, in flower, is the Daisy Chrysanthemum that was once his and is now over 90 years old."

In Bill's own words... I’m up on the ladder and can’t clearly see a tree, so it must be moved...