While major snowstorms have hit the east coast of America, in the UK we’ve had another typically mild and unexciting winter, with no snow in many places. But who needs snow when you have a million snowdrops…
I usually only photograph snowdrops in our garden or local woods, and you often just get small patches of these tiny white flowers hiding under trees. But this year I made the journey to the amazing location near Newbury. Inside a large, fenced woodland there are so many snowdrops, it’s like snow has been dropped creating a floral superbloom to compete with the wild flowers of California!
These incredible blankets of snowdrops covered the ground. No AI. No Photoshop. Just an incredible location for these winter flowers.
The weather was challenging, like it has been for weeks and weeks in the UK, with regular showers. So I waited, and waited, and thankfully it brightened up briefly, long enough to light up the snowdrops on the forest floor.
I used my Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L telephoto lens at f/8, shooting between 140mm to 160mm to compress the perspective – this brings elements in the scene closer together so reduces gaps in snowdrops. I love the composition and light on the above ’wider’ shot, but then I knelt on the ground and got closer to a dense group of snowdrops.
This time I zoomed in for a close-up at 200mm at a wider aperture of f/5.6, focusing closely on a small group of flower heads, for beautiful snowdrop blur in both foreground and background. Sometimes it's best to embrace the subject and get artistic with bokeh!
With special once-every-ten-year superblooms turning deserts in the American West into colorful, flowery destinations ideal for photographers, there are opportunities to capture big scenes with flowers in all sorts of places this year.
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