Bluebells & Sunsets

I have a favourite bluebell wood near where I live and yesterday I took advantage of the warm evening light to capture a few images.  Bluebells aren’t easy to photograph.  It’s difficult to capture their colour correctly and yesterday’s shoot was made even more difficult because of the wind.  Taking a wide angle view and getting back-to-front sharpness is nigh-on impossible unless you use a high ISO.  Thus, I found the most successful shots were the close-ups where I shot with the lens wide open.  Actually, sharpness isn’t too much of an issue considering what I like to do with my bluebell images which is to abstract them to the nth degree.  I stumbled upon a way (stumbling is always the BEST way as no-one can copy you) of making my bluebell images pure abstract,  Let’s just say it involves more than mere motion blur.  I am going to frame up two or three of my favourite abstracts and put them in the Elaichi restaurant where I have mainly got local landscapes, though these are effectively local landscapes as the original images were shot a few miles up the road!  In the gallery below, you will see the original image and then, alongside it, the abstracted version.  Is it art?  You decide…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The shoot came with a bonus: on the drive home, the sun that had previously burst through the canopy to light up my bluebells was setting amidst some clouds and making them glow red and orange.

Normally when we have great sunsets locally, I am being told about it afterwards! These sunset shots are a resounding reminder for me to get out more as sunset approaches.

Better still, one of these images can go in my Belper Calendar next year as this is within the area served by the calendar; another one can go in my Derwent Valley book next spring.  At the end of the day (almost literally) a good spell of photography.