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Photographing blubells
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Please note that I am posting this here because I am describing photographic technique for general discussion and Q+A.
I don’t wish this to moved into the webpage section.This months article for June is a guide to photographing bluebells. Are there any other tips or suggestions you might like to share for addition to my guide (link below)? It might come a bit late for this years bluebell season but let me know if you find it useful.
Photographing Bluebells
http://www.andymcinroy.com/0906note.htmOne of the joys of the springtime is to stroll through a thick carpet of bluebells. It is not surprising that such a beautiful subject has become a bit of a photographic cliché. However, when the bluebells arrive in late April, I can rarely resist the temptation to capture them on camera. Cliché or not, bluebells are not necessarily easy to photograph. For starters these woodlands can present you with a minefield of exposure, contrast and whitebalance problems. In this article I’ll describe some digital photography techniques that will help you to capture them at their finest.
Just a question I have for you all that I’m really struggling with.
Are bluebells ‘blue’ or ‘purple’?
I have always visualised them as ‘purple’, yet many books on flowers describe them, as blue. Is my perception completely off the mark? How would you describe their colour?
The question is, what is the RGB ratio for bluebells. Does it exist or is it valid?, or does the very act of photographing them cause a shift in colour. Has anone shot one by flash that could give me an idea of the RGB readout based on default processing from RAW?
I have read that the colour of bluebells is strongly connected with a UV reflectance, right at our limit of visualisation, but beyond the capability of our cameras.
I would be interested in how you all think about this.
Interesting.
Not blue imho. Somewhere between the 2 I’d say. I’m not totally au-fait with the full colour pallete, but i’d be pitching for mauve/indigo/violet?
I guess I haven’t helped much, just widened the scope for naming error.
Thanks MrH, I suspect that we have hit on a perception problem that probably can’t be answered.
It might be a question as difficult to answer as “what colour is the sea”?
A lot must depend on the light source that is illuminating them. It would still be an interesting exercise to photograph them directly with daylight balanced flash and report the relative ration of RGB. I suspect that in the field, much will depend on the cast caused by the tree canopy and the choice of whitebalance.
I think they are blue, but there can be a problem with uv reflections — a suggestion
is to photograph them early in the morning to avoid excess ‘purple’.I had some part in a discussion about this a year or so ago — the first few posts here [before
the thread rather disintegrates]http://forum.getdpi.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1172&highlight=bluebells
It’s an interesting point. Here are a pair of photographs of mine from this season:
Blue here, in shade.
Purple here, in the open (30 minutes after sunrise).
White balance isn’t the issue – the white balance for the fair head shot is pretty close to the scene as it was, and to render the bluebells blue shifts the whole thing into tungsten film territory.
I can’t honestly remember how they actually looked – my hazy recollection is they weren’t that purple, though.
Do they change hue as the season goes on? The first shot was at the beginning of the month, the other one just the other day.
Cheers,
PeterInteresting Robert,
This is going to be very hard to unravel. In my article I talk about shooting in RAW and removing the tint caused by the green canopy by moving the whitebalance tint slider away from green towards magenta. Now I’m not convinced. The green cast undoubtedly does need correcting, yet that adjustment moves the bluebells further to purple.
Here’s the final image again. Does this look right?
Interesting Peter,
You show very clearly how the light does make a huge difference to the observed colour. Of course it is very hard to go back and try to remember how they looked at the time. In your first image, you say that they are blue? Yet, I would say that they are purple. That’s where my perception gets tangled in knots. Argh !
I have seen people try to correct their bluebells using whitebalance to make them blue. But this usually makes a terrible mess of the rest of the scene. As you say Peter, it pushes the whitebalance into Tungsten and even the leaves start to turn blue.
For example
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Europe/United_Kingdom/photo886420.htmI’m rather surprised, but Francis Rose (one of the most popular keys
to wild flowers) describes them as sky-blue or white.I’d have said purple/blue myself. Maybe I need to look at some real ones and check.
andy mcinroy wrote:
Here’s the final image again. Does this look right?
On my non-colour managed internet explorer on a netbook, yes they do look as I expect them to look.
Getting the colour of bluebells ‘right’ seems to be very difficult. I didn’t think that they changed colour
as they aged — Peter’s at Murlough Bay just don’t look right to me.BTW, there don’t seem to be any bluebells that I can find in Switzerland :(
Its interesting Peter,
When I fist glanced at your Fairhead shot, I immediately thought that you had discovered some other coastal wildflowers. Perhaps I am not used to seeing bluebells away from the woodland but I had to look closely to realise they were bluebells. But given the lighting conditions I can see that the colour could well be an accurate representation of how they were.
My head hurts now. And I thought purple(blue) was suppose to be relaxing.
rc53 wrote:
BTW, there don’t seem to be any bluebells that I can find in Switzerland :(
Just cow-bells.
Andy –
I’m pretty sure they’re bluebells alright. Here’s a 100% crop:Cheers,
Peter
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