Hurray, we can get out and about with our cameras again - it is great to be exploring new places. What I have really noticed in the last couple of weeks are the bluebells, even though I haven’t actively sought them out. They are like the Autumn colour - glorious for a week or two and then gone for another year. So here are my attempts to capture the spectacle. I am not trying to capture an individual flower head, it is more the feeling of standing in a wood or on a hillside surrounded by a blue mist.
‘Woodland Path’ is my first effort. This deciduous wood in the Wye Valley surprised us with the extent of the bluebell carpet. The blue colour is particularly effective against the lime green of the early leaf growth and in this case the moss on a sunlit tree trunk.
The woods run along the side of the hill beside the river Wye and are predominantly Oak, Hazel and Birch. This wood is owned and managed by the Woodland Trust and there were good paths to follow through its length. We were there at the beginning of May and we saw bluebells throughout the woods.
As good as this image is at invoking the Spring woodland, the bluebells are playing a supporting role. They always look less significant in my pictures, than they they do when I am there. In reality each flower is very small compared to the towering trees all around.
Perhaps there are just too many other distracting elements to take our attention away from the flowers here.
My second picture ‘Bluebells and Birch’ is more of a trifle picture with layers of colour like the layers in a trifle. Green at the bottom with a layer of blue then a large yellow layer on the top. This small area of Birch trees caught my eye because the sun was backlighting the leaves and also filtering down onto the carpet of flowers.
A log on the ground creates a leading line into the picture pointing towards an anchor tree which is the first one we tend to look at. Then we are free to explore the bluebell carpet below the yellow or lime coloured leaves. The flowers are more widely dispersed at the bottom of the image and we can see the individual flower heads. As we look into the wood the cumulative effect of the flowers creates a more intense blue which is what I was hoping for.
This image certainly has less to distract us from the flowers but perhaps it is a little too simple. Having said that I think it would make a restful picture as a full size canvas on the wall.
I have given my third image the title ‘Amongst Giants’ because the flowers are dwarfed by these tree trunks.
This intimate shot came about by accident because when I came to process the original image there was a large distracting branch in the top left hand corner. I cropped the image to remove it and the tree trunks became giants in the picture while the bluebells then extended three quarters of the way up the image.
I like this image because I find that it gives me the blue carpet effect that I was looking for, contrasting with the lime coloured leaves and the sunlit moss. The picture also has the added interest of the vines climbing up the tree and the play of sunlight on the moss. Depth is created in the picture by the two trees and the fallen logs. Finally, because the bluebells cover a larger percentage of the image they are more significant, and it is the bluebells that are amongst the giants.
My fourth shot from the woods was my favourite when I took it. I could see the diagonal of blue in the back of the camera and I was happy that I had caught the intensity of the colour.
I think that it is a good record shot of a bluebell wood and I have called it Bluebell Carpet.
The broken tree trunk is on a third - I enhanced the texture of the trunk because it gets a bit lost in the background. The light is coming from the right and catching the leaves on the trees. The strong diagonal comes out of the bottom left corner and is reinforced by the triangle of shade in the bottom right hand corner. This picture satisfies a lot of standard compositional guidelines. Overall however I prefer the previous image ,‘Amongst Giants’, because I think it is a more personal shot, even though it has a few technical issues.
Sunlight is essential for all of these pictures to succeed as it not only brightens the flowers but it also lights up the young leaves. I think that this wrap around feast of colour is what makes the experience of being in a Bluebell Wood so uplifting. The woodland also makes it possible to omit the sky completely from the photographs which helps to reduce the dynamic range of the scene and enables us to see the subtle changes between light and shade under the trees.
The next image was taken on a different day and has a much more open aspect. The hillside was covered in Bluebells with relatively few trees around. I have called this picture ‘Taking a Stroll’ because of the two figures who were walking along and having a chat.
I was shooting almost into the sun, which is not ideal and it created a harsh contrast and washed out the sky so I needed to do some editing to get some sky definition and reduce the glare. I like the balance of the picture and the hills in the distance. I cropped the top off the original image to create this more panoramic view so that we concentrate on what is important. The bluebells are only hinted at with a smear of colour but they definitely add to the story of the picture.
My last picture: ‘Bluebell Time’ has both story and elegance I think. I like the juxtaposition of the leafless tree at the back and the tall birch with new leaves creating a feathery effect. This, with the bluebells, puts us between Winter austerity and Summer opulence.
In this image the sun is to my left rather than overhead which creates a patch of blue sky in the top right corner to balance the blue of the flowers. The shadows across the grass tell us something about the trees just out of sight on the left of the picture. It is nice that the far swathe of flowers creates a diagonal line behind the Birch tree. I think it is also interesting that the shadow in the foreground increases the intensity of the blue in that area.
These last two pictures were taken on the Malvern Hills near the Eastnor Estate. I would not have thought to look for bluebells here but they were spread over large areas of these lower hills.
As is often the case, finding exciting scenery is not even half the task of creating an interesting image. The landscape wraps around you and you have to choose just a small area which captures what you feel when you are there. I do like the way that photography makes you look though, and when the bluebells are gone I will have a few pictures to remember them by.