Bluebell Woods – Return Visit

I timed my arrival at Ashridge for the end of the day, when the lower level of the sun shone deepest into the woods, and was ever-changing. Remembering some of what happened from a lighting standpoint from my last visit was useful.

I happened to be talking to someone else with a camera, in an area with no sunshine, and I said that shortly the sun would go low enough to penetrate this far into the woods and would light up the log across the path in front of us. He was amazed that barely thirty seconds later a shaft of light fell just where I had indicated, and slowly spread wider! Sadly, he managed only the one shot as his battery then ran out. He was grateful however that I had suggested he take a longer exposure stopped right down and using his time delay.

Not long after there was a group of foreign twenty-somethings trying to use their time delay to take a group shot with much hilarity as the photographer made his way back to the group in a stooping run to fall in a heap as the shutter fired; they were all in hysterics after several failed attempts, so I offered to take the shot of all of them, at least admitting it could never be quite as much fun! They were happy for me to do so, and they then took a look at some of what I had taken, one girl then came over to ask how they might see my shots, and as I finished taking that shot, she came out with the immortal words: “Do you come here often?” to which my obvious reply was: “That sounds awfully like a chat-up line!” We both laughed. When I mentioned the incident to my younger married daughter, she was equally amused!

Oh, and yes this time I made very sure that Image Stabilisation was OFF!