Spring has arrived

 This week I had such a lovely excursion  photographing spring flowers. We visited the very pretty Richardson Dees park, Wallsend,  a park fairly local to us in North Tyneside,  on a magical sunshiney morning .

The sun was just starting to cast its rays over the park, which was slightly hazy, causing some gorgeous light beams cascading through the trees, lighting up the jewel like flowers. We couldn't have chosen a better morning, with barely a hint of a breeze, and relatively warm for February.

I quickly found my favourite spot full of purple Crocuses, Snowdrops and Winter aconites, all in bloom, although none of the Crocus flowers were open.

 The flowers were mostly in shade when I arrived which is actually a lot better for photographing shiny flowers such as Crocuses, the harsher light of bright sunshine can be a bit tricky for flower photography, often causing severe contrast between light and dark. But the sun soon rose and lit the dazzling scene up. So I was having to move around  and keep in the shade to make the photos work the way that I wanted, luckily there are a few trees that helped. I'm hoping to return with a reflector next time to diffuse sunshine, with a stand to hold it, maybe a bit later in the day next time too so I can capture the Crocuses actually fully open ( I'm assuming they close when its dark and open in good light/warmth). By the time I left, the Crocuses were starting to respond to the daylight radiance and expose their full, exquisite colours, I did get a few shots of some in their full glory, but not many, so will plan to return within the week if I can.

I took along 4 lenses but ended up only using one, my 100-400, because it allowed me to photograph the flowers from a few ft away, whilst lying on a mat, which meant I wasn't crushing lots of flowers. You can see from an image further up how closely planted the flowers are, it was difficult to get close to the Winter aconites, but I will be trying to find a better spot to photograph them next time, when hopefully the flowers will be open.

I photographed pretty much everything at F6.3 to F8, yet still got a lovely bokeh due to the longer lens and positioning, composing the scenes to include blurred foreground and background. Whilst I had my mini tripod, I ended up just lying on the ground looking through the viewfinder - something I'm regretting now as my neck and shoulder muscles are crying out for some deep heat and hot baths. So tripod it will be next time. Its funny just how much I forgot after not doing this for a few months.

It was lovely to chat to a few people and also finally meet an online photographer friend after chatting via social media for many years. I was amused to discover that he thought I had fallen from my scooter, until he spotted the camera, I really must make a sign for my scooter so people don't panic. Even one of the gardeners was super friendly and rightly proud of the garden, hoping I would share the resulting images.

The image below is my favourite from this session, you can see why I want to return to capture more of the blooms fully open. Believe it or not, all I have done to this image is increase shadows and reduce highlights. That's all for today, lots more images below.