Bluebells

The weather here in the UK remains dismal. Sunshine is in short supply, rainfall over generous, skies like grey blankets. There have been overnight frosts and the temperatures are well below average. Despite these miseries, trees have greened-up, and the apple blossom arrived, got soaked, and is now over. And our Wisteria is struggling into bloom, reluctantly. These are all seasonal events that I look forward to – all lost photographically and visually. Barely a frame captured thus far.

We are now into the Bluebell season, when I would expect to be rushing here and there, visiting a number of my favourite Beech woods, admiring the blue haze, dappled by sunlight, that normally one expects to see. I have yet to see that properly too. Yes, there are Bluebells, and beech leaves are unfurling. But the bulbs are sparse, thin stemmed and weedy. We are being sold short in yet another aspect of Spring that normally lifts spirits and brightens eyes.

I visited my favourite Bluebell wood last Friday (Dockey Wood on the Ashridge Estate). The cloud base was slightly less grey, but the sun refused to shine and the light was dull. Still, I was determined to get some pictures. These first two are a little over-saturated perhaps, but I wanted colour!

Stymied by the weather and struggling to capture the ‘classic’ style of shot I decided to have another go at ‘panning’. [Some of you may have seen the post ‘Plantation Panning’ two weeks ago, if you haven’t you might like to take a look – click the link].

But before we get to the panned shots, back home after the shoot, I thought I would try Filter/Blur/Motion Blur in Photoshop, with the Blur distance set at 180 pixels.

Here (above) is the processed blurred version of the very first image in this post. Doesn’t look a great deal different from the In-Camera panned images that are below.

Click on the first thumbnail in the gallery  below and then use the arrows to go through the images one by one. These include (last three) the images shown earlier in this Post.

So, there are two ways to arrive at virtually the same result (often the case in Digital Photography). You can produce it the ‘pure’ way in-camera, which relies quite a bit on luck. Or you can play around at home with an image until you get precisely the effect you are after. It’s your choice.

At least this shoot brightened my day and I came away with something a little different from the usual – and that is always refreshing.