This was my first visit to some local woods near to where I live during this spring. I wanted to take some bluebell images and heard these woods were amongst the best in Derbyshire. I decided to visit one evening before sunset when the light would be softer. There were sunny conditions on this particular day providing dappled light within the woods themselves.
Woodland photography is always a chaotic environment so a long lens helps to isolate scenes and help simplify the composition. After about 1 hour of exploring. I finally arrived at a viewpoint looking down the slope of the hillside and into a clearing with some nice light delicately penetrating the woodland from the side and beyond. I decided to make the bluebells part of the composition rather than the dominant element. If you don't have the perfect bluebell carpet with tall trees as quite often seen in woodland in the south of England this is often another approach. But it helps to have some decent light and other contrasting elements such as backlighting and illuminated green leaves in certain parts of the composition in this case. It took a while to compose the image.
A fast shutter speed and high ISO was required to freeze the movement of the foliage from the breeze that was occurring at the time. The next challenge was the the post processing. So I opted for a soft effect with selective tonal adjustments to create depth and some atmosphere in the scene.
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Dimitri Vasileiou • Editor