• How to find your nearest bluebell wood

The National Trust has a number of bluebell woods on their land but these are mainly used for visiting families and not for professional family shoots. Therefore I would begin by scouting for smaller local woods close to the well known larger woods, as bluebells tend to migrate across areas. A starting point is to visit the National Trusts bluebell page which lists bluebell woods all over the country. Top bluebell woods in Hertfordshire include Ashridge and Heartwood.

• Choose the time of day you photograph wisely

Bluebell photography is especially tricky as these flowers tend to grow where the light is dappled. Also at this time of year, the trees are quite bare so you can often be faced with very bright patches of light which can create unevenly lit images. Ideally, you want to photograph very early in the morning, or late into the evening when the sun is lower. If this isn’t possible then shooting when it is cloudy can actually be a positive. You can see from the examples below how different an image can feel depending on which time of day it was taken.

• Consider your perspective

• Lens Choice

• Editing challenges specific to bluebell photography

• Strong blocks of dark colours in the background from tree trunks. I try my best to remove these from shot by changing my position but if this isn’t possible I will often use a gradient map in photoshop to reduce the contrast (see tutorial here).
• Green colour casts. With my family often sitting on the ground you can get a lot of green bouncing onto their skin, especially in the shadows. To remove these I will use a magenta photo filter painted over the affected areas.

• Styling your family – what to wear

Clothing choice is very important when shooting in the bluebells. Your base colour pallette in all your images is going to be quite an acidic green and a very vibrant purple/ blue. Ideally your clothing needs to fit with this colour scheme and I tend to use neutral tones such as cream, grey, light pink etc. One excellent tool for generating colour palettes is coolors. Here I locked in a typical bluebell palette and then all you do is press the space bar to generate complementary colour palettes.

• Protecting bluebells for future generations

Our bluebells are a protected species so paying attention to where you sit your subjects is very important. Look for patches/areas that have no bluebells or use pathways. If you shoot from very low down it is easy to make a path disappear in the camera. Alternatively, you can use the pathways to create some lovely leading lines to your family. As small children are often tempted to pick the bluebells one great tip from Deborah Longmore Photography is you can order a bunch of artificial bluebells from Amazon or Ebay.

Looking for inspiration for your bluebell photography?

 Take a look at some of the incredible bluebell images from a collective of UK photographers. I have included images taken in the bright daylight, at golden hour and families, children and pets! You can watch the video below or view the images and learn how they were photographed.

This image was taken at 7pm with my daughter in Coronovirus lockdown. We found a very small patch of bluebells right next to our home and this was taken on the Canon 70-200 at 2.8. To see a before and after edit of this bluebell image just scroll to the end of this blog post. 

Little Bunny Photography

Photo by Julie Peart. Taken at 6.30pm with 100mm lens on the Canon 6D

Amanda Powell Photography

VB Photography Taken at 8,30am with a 70-200 lens, 320 ISO, f.2.8, 1/800ss

Sarah Greer Photography

Captured by Helen Hoffman Photography Taken on a cloudy day,  F 3.2, ISO 320, 1/1000ss

Roberta B Photography

Nature Nurture Photography

angels with dirty faces photography

But Natural photography

Sarah Capon Photography taken just as it began to snow!