WILDFLOWERS
Landscape, garden and nature photographers alike share their top tips for capturing stunning wildflower scenes
Mark Bauer
Mark is a full-time landscape photographer and author of eight photo books. A multi-award winner, his most recent success was winning the Wildflower Landscapes category of the International Garden Photographer of the Year. See www.markbauerphotography.com and @markbauerphotography on Facebook and Instagram.
One of the joys of spring is watching the landscape come back to life as wildflowers begin to bloom: bluebells and wild garlic in woodlands, cow parsley on the verges, and swathes of pink thrift across cliff tops. As the season progresses and turns into summer, these sights are replaced by fields of red as poppies spring up on agricultural land, and later in the summer, carpets of purples across heathland as heather reaches its peak. All of these make great subjects for landscape photography.
Visit the coast
The coast may not be the first place you think of when it comes to wildflowers, but in spring, clifftops can glow with pink as thrift comes into bloom. While in some places there may be just a few individual plants dotted about, other locations feature a thick carpet of colour. Wideangles are favoured in these situations; get down low and close to the flowers to fill the frame. Position yourself so that there is an interesting background – perhaps a dramatic headland or sweeping, golden sands below – select a small aperture such as f/16 and focus carefully to ensure back-to-front sharpness. You can calculate the hyperfocal distance using an app such as PhotoPills, or use ‘double distance focusing’, where you focus twice as far into the scene as the nearest object you want to keep sharp.
Head to the woods
In early spring, one of the best environments to shoot wildflowers is woodland. Bluebells and wild garlic can create some of the most impressive displays of wildflowers you’ll see, often with colour stretching far into the distance. The most photogenic woods are those populated with rows of regular, straight trunks such as beeches and where the forest floor is clean and clear of debris. It’s worth scouting locations before planning a shoot, even to a familiar location, as forest management activity means this can change a lot from one year to the next. Try to avoid photographing in bright sunlight as contrast can be extreme and woodland rarely photographs well in these conditions. Instead, shoot on bright but overcast days, or in the golden light at the beginning or end of the day. Always stick to paths and take great care not to trample flowers; bluebells can take many years to recover.
Shoot on still mornings
Unless you’re aiming for deliberate motion blur – in which case, you need to make things rea
