I’ll admit to having a fondness for Bluebells, cute little things with their jaunty stance quite often swaying in the breeze wafting their seductive perfume about. It’ll only be the British native ones though, none of those foreign imposters that threaten to infiltrate our British woodlands and change our landscape for ever. But those pesky little fellas were driving me insane… I was developing a love hate relationship with them!
Like many of us at the same time of year I’ve woken before dawn to get the best light for my yearly trip to the woods to exercise my needs to photograph the Bluebells, quite often returning home with a quick flick through on the PC to discover I’d taken my “same old same old”. Why were these unfeasibly beautiful symbols of the British spring proving to be so elusive to me in a achieving a satisfying image? I had tried all sorts of approaches; sunny days, misty days, wet and windy days, early in the morning, late in the afternoon, up close and personal or sweeping carpets of them, jiggling the camera about to make everything smeary, infinite depth of field, insanely shallow depth of field, with people, without people, uncluttered woodland floors, chaotic floors, sunlight exploding through the mist… on and on I went; even the inside of my PC was starting to look blue with so many pictures… and there was the answer for me, everything just looked too blue, I had this fascination of literally immersing myself with the things to the point of overload.
Perverse as it may seem and as much as I like a nice carpet of bluebells I was overdosing on them, what I really needed was an altogether more subtle approach. For us in the UK the sight of carpets of bluebells in the woods in the spring is the first burst of colour coming out of the winter, I felt a need to over indulge myself in all things colourful and literally smother my images with them. But this time I vowed to take an altogether different approach, for sure I was in the woods bright and early but this time first without camera…
I fulfilled my spring urge for bluebell love by just taking a walk with them, weaving my way in and out along tracks; careful not to trample their delicate blooms and vibrant green foliage. Soaking in their delicate fragrance lifted by the morning sun warming the woodland floor, catching glimpses of fleeting light playing through the sprays of verdant Beech leaves across the carpet of blue. For just a moment whilst sitting in a clearing on a bed of last year’s dry crumpled beech leaves listening to birdsong and running my hands across the tops of the wet bluebell heads I enjoyed the solitude of those bluebell woods.
All too soon the moment was over though, as I walked back to my car, sad to be leaving I turned to take one last glance and caught a hint of blue and then knew the picture I wanted to make…. an abiding memory of bluebells in the woods.