Misuzu Photography: Bluebells and Ferns

Hello and Happy Monday!

I can't believe we are in May already and also that it's May the 4th today! I feel like I should be writing a May the Fourth/Star Wars related post but I have shared most of the Star Wars related modelling images I have already. Plus this week is a Misuzu Photography post, so instead, I'm sharing some Bluebells and Ferns with you from the other day.

Me and Dave Edkins went for a walk at Hem Heath Woods last week in the sunshine and took some photos. The weather was lovely and it was all very green and beautiful, we could hear the birds (when Pixie was quiet long enough, that is) and the sun was shining. It was a lovely few hours, and we even had a picnic. Today I am going to share some of my favourite images from the day.

Bluebells and Ferns

I think bluebells are really pretty flowers and they look especially striking when they're covering the floor of a pretty woodland. But as I generally prefer taking photographs of things close up, here are some of the close up shots I got of the bluebells:

This next shot is one of my favourites cos it's got a little ferny in there:

I really enjoyed playing with some of the harsh contrasty light that was coming through where the ferns and bluebells were. I think these images look very dramatic:

And because I'm so obsessed with ferns, here is one of my favourite fern images in three different ways. Firstly, the colour version: ferns are a lovely shade of green so the colour is quite important. The second image is the monochrome version, which I like because obviously I have a deep love for black and white imagery, but also it seems to make the shape of the leaves look more obvious.

And then the third version of this image is a closer crop. I find it quite fascinating when you have a picture in a picture where the close in crop works just as well as the wider shot.

Ivy

I've always loved taking photos of ivy, and I think it's cool just how different these two images are. The first one is a very bright image of a dense patch of ivy, which contrasts entirely with the darker second image where the only light is a patch of harsh sun coming diagonally across the image.

In this next shot, you can spot the photobomber in the background. I couldn't resist editing this one because it's nice to remember how happy Pixie was running around taking her own photos with her little camera:

Logs

On the theme of logs, I took a few lovely images of a fallen tree. The textures in these next two images worked really well, especially in the monochrome image.

Mud

We came across a lake and the edge of it was very muddy. In the first image, I loved the green patches of grass on the log, which contrasted with the browns surrounding it. In the second image, I really liked how vibrant the greens were in the sunny patches. I used a wide aperture to get a shallow depth of field, with the focus being the grass-like plants in the foreground.

Trees

The light that day was amazing and looked truly magical when you got a bright patch of woodland lit up by the sun coming through the less dense parts of the canopy. This left some very bright light areas that contrasted nicely to the super dark patches. This shot looks so much better in black and white, but I wanted to show you both versions for comparison:

Shooting into the sun obviously isn't advised but I couldn't resist taking a quick one because I think it can look really cool sometimes:

Pancake Lens

I took my pancake lens with me but I didn't use it all that much as I was mostly wanting to do close up photography. Here is one of the shots I got with it that I thought really worked well:

Tiny Photographer

Below is an image I took of my tiny human being a tiny photographer. I felt super proud watching her go around taking photos like me and Dave were. Of course sometimes she was just wildly snapping away (she's four, of course she was) but watching her carefully line up some shots and to be able to accurately photograph what she wanted was pretty special.

So I would like to share some of the beautiful work from the fantastic (and slightly feral) photographer in training, Pixie Rainbow. Proud Mama moment:

May the Fourth be with You

Okay, so obviously I couldn't let a blog on May the Fourth go without something Star Wars in there. So here are some images taken by a lovely photographer that I worked with for the first time over the weekend called Peter Jardine in a blacked out studio, using just a lightsaber for light:

In the first image, I was wearing a black sith-like robe and focussed on lighting my face with the saber. The second image, I obviously had to try nude with the Mando helmet because why wouldn't I after shooting it while wearing a pretty dress recently with Rhianne Lousie (you can see that image in the blog post I did a few weeks ago by clicking here). The final image is me nude, holding the Mando helmet under my arm, which you can barely see. I love how this image came out because you would only notice by looking really closely at the image, and I quite like things that make you look closer to understand it fully.

May the Fourth be with you. Until next week...

Darth Misuzu x