Bluebells around Sedlescombe

As spring is early this year and the 2020 winter was so wet. I was eager to get outside and find some new walks in the countryside.  Around Sedlescombe I took a friend for a walk around a local vineyard and the adjacent woodlands, were we discovered a very pretty Bluebell walk. There colours are intense and the carpeting effect in the woodland is amazing at this time and hard to catch right.

Here are a few tips to photographing bluebells in woodland effectively.

Firstly, composition can be hard to get right in tightly patched trees! Don’t shot to high up because you might lose the intense effect of the blue on the canopy.

Don’t do this

Best to find a small opening in the wood to get a close up area of bluebells that holds the eye and can lead out into the trees. Get down low to capture  a more carpet effect to the picture.

Do this.

The other difficult thing you might find in shooting bluebells in the colouring. The blue is relatively difficult to capture right on a camera, especially on older DSLR models, (this is similar with the metallic blue of a kingfisher!)

So it is always good practice to check your colour match with the back of your camera closely, to see if it is right. Change the camera settings to Auto setting (A), Sunshine setting and final Kelvin setting (K)

The Kelvin effects colour temperature at 5000K so it’s about normal in the mid-range. 3000K is very cold.

At 8000k it is very warm.

Adjusting this very slightly will be one way to correct any difference in colour making the bluebells match your photo.