The Path Less Trodden
I really ought to become a bit more adventurous at bluebell time. There are plenty of quiet intimate woodlands in the area, many of them explored and reported back on over morning coffee by my colleague Katie before I packed work in for good. I made mental notes of all of her weekend wanderings and resolved to go and act upon the secrets that had been so generously shared with me. While I see plenty of fantastic images from the more widely visited hotspots, I prefer to hide in a little known backwater where only a few locals tread. Even Katie's recommendations lie as yet untouched by my boots and tripod, in favour of the spot that I've visited with unerring predictability for the last seven springtimes and the last seven autumns. One day I really ought to try another location.
But you see the woodland without a name has it all for me in abundance. A stream runs right through the mostly beech filled wilderness, a network of small paths cutting through the swathes of spring bluebells and wild garlic. While the struggle to produce images under those watchful trees continued to mystify me, the familiarity brought by the continual visits, coupled with the way the light filters through the forest on a sunny evening helped me to begin to make sense of that eternal woodland photography challenge. The time spent within these few acres has brought some of the happiest moments or pure abandon, even when the art of delivering a compelling image remained so aloof. I recently watched a hiking programme during which our intrepid adventurer was introduced to something called "forest bathing" in the nearby Helford Passage, a practice which entails simply opening your senses to the sights, smells and sounds around you and letting go of everything else. Well you might imagine what I thought - although I really had no idea that what I'd been doing for years had a name. But if I find a group of seemingly entranced celebrities sitting on tree stumps gazing into nothingness on my next visit I will not be impressed.
This particular area of the woods also managed to hide from me for a number of years, until a search for wild garlic brought me here twelve months ago. While a substantial patch of the white stuff lay in another part of the wood, it never seemed to catch that dappled light I wanted, so further exploration was on the agenda. Eventually I stumbled across the stream into a colourful corridor white I'd never come to in spring before. At the edge of the trees, sunlight bled softly through the canopy and spread itself across so many thousands of tiny white and purple flowers. It took a couple of visits before I went home with something that I was happy enough to share, and from then the new spot became one I'd return to in the future.
And so I did, three times in a span of five days last week, each time heading to this exact spot and hoping the evening light would do what I hoped for. Each time I'd find myself waiting for as much as an hour for the light, and each time I saw not a single person in this quiet corner of perfection. It makes me wonder how on earth that narrow path even exists. This shot came from the second of those three visits, on an evening when an unrelenting breeze forced the ISO beyond where I'd normally want to take it, but the light was just how I hoped it would be at that moment.
The bluebells in the wood were especially good this season, smothering the forest floor, full of vitality and packed with a scent I'd never noticed before. But I really need to spread my wings a little next time and venture into new spaces to continue this strange affair with woodland photography; ever challenging, often frustrating, but always especially rewarding when a moment delivers a shot worth sharing.
The Path Less Trodden
I really ought to become a bit more adventurous at bluebell time. There are plenty of quiet intimate woodlands in the area, many of them explored and reported back on over morning coffee by my colleague Katie before I packed work in for good. I made mental notes of all of her weekend wanderings and resolved to go and act upon the secrets that had been so generously shared with me. While I see plenty of fantastic images from the more widely visited hotspots, I prefer to hide in a little known backwater where only a few locals tread. Even Katie's recommendations lie as yet untouched by my boots and tripod, in favour of the spot that I've visited with unerring predictability for the last seven springtimes and the last seven autumns. One day I really ought to try another location.
But you see the woodland without a name has it all for me in abundance. A stream runs right through the mostly beech filled wilderness, a network of small paths cutting through the swathes of spring bluebells and wild garlic. While the struggle to produce images under those watchful trees continued to mystify me, the familiarity brought by the continual visits, coupled with the way the light filters through the forest on a sunny evening helped me to begin to make sense of that eternal woodland photography challenge. The time spent within these few acres has brought some of the happiest moments or pure abandon, even when the art of delivering a compelling image remained so aloof. I recently watched a hiking programme during which our intrepid adventurer was introduced to something called "forest bathing" in the nearby Helford Passage, a practice which entails simply opening your senses to the sights, smells and sounds around you and letting go of everything else. Well you might imagine what I thought - although I really had no idea that what I'd been doing for years had a name. But if I find a group of seemingly entranced celebrities sitting on tree stumps gazing into nothingness on my next visit I will not be impressed.
This particular area of the woods also managed to hide from me for a number of years, until a search for wild garlic brought me here twelve months ago. While a substantial patch of the white stuff lay in another part of the wood, it never seemed to catch that dappled light I wanted, so further exploration was on the agenda. Eventually I stumbled across the stream into a colourful corridor white I'd never come to in spring before. At the edge of the trees, sunlight bled softly through the canopy and spread itself across so many thousands of tiny white and purple flowers. It took a couple of visits before I went home with something that I was happy enough to share, and from then the new spot became one I'd return to in the future.
And so I did, three times in a span of five days last week, each time heading to this exact spot and hoping the evening light would do what I hoped for. Each time I'd find myself waiting for as much as an hour for the light, and each time I saw not a single person in this quiet corner of perfection. It makes me wonder how on earth that narrow path even exists. This shot came from the second of those three visits, on an evening when an unrelenting breeze forced the ISO beyond where I'd normally want to take it, but the light was just how I hoped it would be at that moment.
The bluebells in the wood were especially good this season, smothering the forest floor, full of vitality and packed with a scent I'd never noticed before. But I really need to spread my wings a little next time and venture into new spaces to continue this strange affair with woodland photography; ever challenging, often frustrating, but always especially rewarding when a moment delivers a shot worth sharing.