Bluebell surprise

Bluebell season in the UK is officially over but I guess we will keep see the images of those beautiful flowers posted here and there for quite some time, in spite of garlic and rapeseed bloom. Such is the nature of the bluebell phenomenon that it possesses some strange power over many of us. Simply put it – we find them beautiful.

I am no different and having been offered an opportunity to photograph the in a large private forest I could not say no. Indeed, I went there not once but twice and still believe I should have stayed much longer each time.

Bluebells are not usually taken in long exposure and a lion share of my images taken there had nothing to do with LE. A few, however, did and I decided to present two of them here. Both were taken utilising ICM technique. 

The first one is called ‘Bluebell trees’. I hope you agree that the purple stretch does resemble a line of trees, seen from some distance, a stretch of green grass in front of them. This image was taken during the second visit.

The second image is called ‘Bluebell Girl’ and was taken during the first visit – and, in my opinion – is a bit more interesting one. Not because it is a ‘better’ image – they are too different to be judged objectively. What interests me in this one is what seems to be a face – I imagine it is a face of a young girl – looking down onto the stretch of bluebells. If you also happen to see it (top-right of the image, just by the wall of green on the right) let me assure you this is not done in Photoshop. It is a happy coincidence of time, exposure and sheer luck.

As this is exactly what I wanted to encourage you this month – to always try and trust what is in front of us – trust that it will deliver if we give it a chance, if we allow it to present itself to us regardless of our expectations, visualisations and pre-planning. There have been many times when I returned home without the images I wanted to take, more than I would ever wish for. Yet, I do not recall a single time when I returned without at least one interesting image. Not the greatest image of them all, something not even to be considered for an exhibition – but certainly something to be a part of joy of photographing, which I believe to be a lot more important that all the kudos that might be had elsewhere.