Carpet of blue

Phil picked me up around 2pm and we headed over to a small piece of woodland near Ruckinge to take in the bluebells. The warm weather having bought them all out in a frenzy we did not want to miss the opportunity.

The carpet of blue that greeted us

The hazel was in leaf

I used a couple of reflectors to light the undersides but the direct sunlight was playing havoc reflecting off the track

I tried a similar shot from a lower angle, using the out of focus flowers in the background

A lone white mutant flower head

Again, alongside its true relatives

Technical footnote

For the close-up shots I used the following:

• Camera mounted on a tripod
• Mirror lock-up
• 2-second timer release (cable or remote release an option too)
• 100mm macro lens (on a 1.3x crop sensor giving effective focal length of 130mm) with apertures between f/5 and f/8
• Auto white balance
• Focusing was manual using live view with 10x magnification
• Viewfinder blanking cover (to avoid stray light entering the camera body and altering exposure)
• Two white reflectors, one below and one propped behind the flower heads to give a more even light distribution
• Exposure compensation to expose for the highlights (validated via histogram)
• Adjusted ISO to keep shutter speeds above 1/125 to compensate for any wind movement (although it was pretty still most of the time)
• I used small twigs as props on the stems of some of the taller flowers to dampen any movement