Queenswood Arboretum and Country Park is situated just south of Leominster, around 20 minutes by car from our home. Once upon time it was part of an ancient oak forest stretching up to the Welsh border, but the last of those oak trees were felled during the First World War to provide timber for the war effort.
The planting of the trees at the Arboretum commenced in 1953 to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and it has now around 1,200 different species of trees. It was funded by a public appeal in 1953 and is now a public charity.
But I wasn’t there for the trees, but for the bluebells growing everywhere below the trees and in the glades. The sun broke through the trunks and branches and created a playful light on the mats of bluebells underneath.
To photograph a mat of bluebells and get the image sharp from nearby bluebells to the forest in the background I set the camera on a tripod quite low to the ground. Then I take a series of images (around 10 or so) with different focuses from the bluebells closest to the camera to the tree trunks in the background. Then I merge all those images in Photoshop to get a composite image, where everything is sharp. The different photos have to be perfectly aligned, so a tripod is necessary (but most of my landscape photos are on tripod anyway).
