SPRING LANDSCAPES
Capture fresh colours and dramatic weather in the season of renewal
Winter may provide us with some highly unique image opportunities, such as snow blanketing a familiar landscape, but after a few months the promise of spring is a welcome relief. Spring has always been a season of hope and excitement. In centuries past, surviving the winter months until the skies began to clear and the lands turned from white to green was something worth celebrating. For perhaps slightly less existential reasons, but by no means less emotionally uplifting ones, spring promises photographers new opportunities to experiment with colour, try new genres, and broaden their artistic horizons.
As a season it presents an intriguing challenge. The colour palette may broaden as the weeks roll on, but it doesn’t quite match autumn for overall variety. Meanwhile, vegetation returns, and the trees exhibit a fuller crop of leaves, but there are still gaps, due to local environmental factors. Spring can therefore seem like an inbetween season, where the transition from barren winter landscape to vibrant summer scenic creates pockets of detail, interspersed by sweeping areas of negative space. This provides great potential for dramatic images if you know where to look.
Spring is also a very changeable season, and the weather can shift dramatically in a short space of time. This generates some incredible lighting, which can be used to enhance texture and strengthen colour contrasts.
Here we’ll show you how to capture successful images over the next few weeks, by exploring how to use strong directional sunlight and understand the progression of spring colours.