PHOTOGRAPHING BLUEBELLS
Once a year for just a few weeks our woodlands here in the UK are transformed by the arrival of carpets of beautiful bluebells. Gone are the cold, skeletal, drab browns and greys, replaced by delicious spring green leaves and delectable blues and magentas that signify the awakenings of our woods. Among the leaves are the birds, singing away as they seek the company of others. the incessant hammering of woodpeckers, communicating and building new nests for future young. If you are really lucky you might hear the soft rythmic calling of a cuckoo, in search of a mate. The first warm rays of the sun dappling through the freshly expanding canopy of leaves above. And me, huffing and puffing my way through it all, camera in one hand, tripod in the other and my Shimoda camera bag loaded with too many things I wont need strapped to my back! Stumbling along paths not trodden since autumn, bleary eyed and grumpy from the 4am wake up call, lacking the sufficient amount of caffeine to turn me into a functioning human being, but still, I am here and excited to see what delights are hidden among the trees!
I am in the middle of a two week holiday taken specifically so I can have the opportunity to get into the woods in the right conditions without having awkward conversations at work about why I am constantly late and why are there twigs all over my clothes. For me, this is one of the two peak times of the year to be out in the woods with my camera, the other of course being Autumn. The start of the week hadn’t looked too good with no mist or fog forecast and although there had been some nice light it just wasn’t the same without the white stuff.
I had orginally decided to meet up with my friend Chris Harrison at Micheldever woods on this particular morning as the forecasts the day before had been predicting mist there for a couple of hours but upon being woken at 3am by my Iphone-which is now cowering in my pocket trying not to make a noise-the weather had turned for the worse and the mist, like my finances, was gone! I messaged Chris to apologise but I wouldn’t be coming as I had noticed there was still a chance for some fog more locally. My mate Dave was headed to another wood in Dorset, full of gorgeous oaks rather than the more typical beech trees, that we had both photographed before, Dave more successfully than I, so I decided to risk it for a biscuit and meet up with him there instead.
On the drive over though things were not looking good. There was little patches of mist about but barely any sign of the promised fog. However the sky was beginning to light up so I once again changed my mind and headed to a local estate that had some glorious oaks in open fields to see if I could get one with some mist and a nice sky behind.
It turned out ok but nothing world beating
While stood at the edge of the field I had the call from Dave. “Thick fog here mate”. I used to pay £1 a minute to hear dirty phrases like this whispered down the phone to me! Once I had managed to stop the quivering I hurriedley headed back to the car and drove perfectly within the law honest m’lord straight over to the woods.
Upon my arrival I was overjoyed to find the place shrouded in fog. I could barely see ten metres ahead of me. The small parking area was already filled with what I suspected were other photographers vehicles but there was space across the road to dump my car and I quickly booted up and grabbed my gear, which leads us back to me huffing and puffing through the woods carrying way too much stuff and trying to reach the good spots before the fog buggered off.
One of the first scenes to greet me as I entered this wood!
I eventually found Dave deep among the trees and also bumped into my buddy Lee Cooper and said hello to another chap who I didnt recognise as Luke Raines until Dave mentioned it was him, sorry Luke, it was nice to briefly meet you!
Our main focus was a stunning, widespread oak among a field of bluebells that we had discovered last year. To be fair it didnt look quite so good this year but I suspect that was down to the fact the surrounding bluebells were not quite fully out yet and the oak leaves this year were greener and less “orangey” than last year.
A fabulous oak among this carpet of bluebells!
This isn’t the only scene in this woodland though and I spent several hours here filling up on compositions to ration onto social media in the coming weeks! On the way out I bumped into Phil aka ‘Capturing the Elelements’ and we headed back in to have a catch up and grab some less foggy images from the top of the woods.
All in all it was a great session, with good banter, excellent conditions and, I hope, some really nice images to add to the portfolio. Next year I will be running some photography workshops during this season so wont be able to focus so much on my own photography so it was nice to do this one last time solo!
I actually prefer this scene over the oak!
Thats it for this one, I hope you enjoyed the read!
Toodles!