SPRING SHOOTS

The days are getting longer and nature is reawakening. David Clark asks seven top photographers to reveal the standout spring shots from their portfolios

Confetti by Valda Bailey

‘There is no time like Spring,’ wrote the poet Christina Rossetti, ‘when life’s alive in everything.’ Spring is perhaps the most enthusiastically greeted of all seasons, when nature emerges from its winter sleep; flowers start to bloom, trees come into leaf and animals and insects are full of activity.

For photographers, spring brings challenges, not least the unpredictability of the weather. Nevertheless, nature’s annual rebirth is a magical time to create images. ‘I love to shoot in spring,’ says photographer Andrew Montgomery, ‘because there’s a real sense of the garden coming alive. The mornings are crisp, the birds are singing. There’s a chill to the air, but the sun is out and everything’s raring to go. After the browns of winter, it’s fresh and green and new.’ 

Bailey is particularly beguiled by blossom and has made a series of such images. ‘It’s so beautiful, delicate and transient, and the visual spectacle of it is such a celebration of the season,’ she says. ‘When making this image, my objective was to cut out a lot of the extraneous detail and simplify the scene. As I moved the camera to make different exposures, the fluffy, white blossom repeated and became confetti-like and exuberant.’ On the following pages, photographers specialising in a range of genres, including landscape, portraiture, nature and wildlife photography, reveal their own favourite images of spring and the stories behind their making. 

Tim Flach, Monarch Butterflies, Mexico 

Flach’s image shows monarch butterflies at a crucial part of their life cycle. ‘In autumn, they migrate thousands of miles from southern Canada to the oyamel pine forests of Michoacán in central Mexico,’ he explains. ‘They overwinter there then, as they’re warmed up by the spring sunshine, they rise in their millions to mate. That’s when I shot this. It’s an extraordinary sight and the trees are covered with them. Afterwards, they make their way up through North America into southern Canada. Later in the year, when temperatures start dropping, the migration begins again.’ 

timflach.com, Flach’s latest book, Birds, is published by Abrams 

Clive Nichols, Snake’s Head Fritillary, Morton Hall Gardens in Worcestershire 

just after dawn on a spring morning when he saw the distinctive bell-shaped flowers of the snake’s head fritillary. ‘They are very graceful flowers with a straight, slender stem and there were thousands of them growing in a meadow,’ he says. ‘To get this viewpoint, I lay down on a blanket in the dew-soaked grass and singled out one flower.’ The very shallow depth of field was achieved by using a 180mm macro lens, and by shooting into the light Nichols made the flower appear to glow from the inside. 

clivenichols.com

Lizzie Shepherd, Birches High Above Wharfedale 

One of Shepherd’s favourite locations is an area above some woods overlooking Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dales. ‘I photographed this scene late one afternoon, when there was a nice diffuse light,’ she reveals. ‘I like one particular pair of entwined birch trees there, which look to me as if they are dancing and looking over the dale.’ The image’s airy atmosphere comes from shooting towards the sunrays filtering through the clouds. Shepherd adds, ‘There’s something about backlighting in springtime, coming through the greens, that’s particularly fresh and appealing.’ 

lizzieshepherd.com

Chris Frost, Woolland Woods, Dorset 

Frost loves shooting in woodland and says that its flora wakes him fromhis own annual winter ‘photographic hibernation’. Out seeking bluebells, he came across this beautiful display
of wild garlic in woods near Blandford Forum in Dorset. ‘The scene was so unique and mysterious, a sea of garlic so unfamiliar to most, that I wanted to create an image where the viewer could lose themselves within it, and visually wander through,’ he says. ‘The soft and airy feel delivered by morning mists added to the sense of the mystical and allowed me to frame up the distant opening as an element of the unknown.’ The image won the 2020 Landscape Photographer of the Year competition. 

chrisfrostphotography.co.uk

Harry Borden, Alex Metcalf, The Tree Listener, March 2019 

Borden’s Four Hugs Wide project, made in collaboration with writer Mireille Thornton, is a series of portraits of people who revere trees and nature. One of his subjects is artist and designer Alex Metcalf, who has invented a tree-listening device through which you can hear the sound of water travelling up the xylem tubes just behind the tree’s bark. ‘I photographed Alex on land beside the Helford River, near Falmouth,’ Borden says. ‘We went for a walk and he stopped to listen to this tree with his device. It was spring and he could literally hear the sap rising – water and minerals surging up from the tree’s roots to its leaves.’ 

harryborden.co.uk; Borden’s latest book, Single Dad, is published by Hoxton Mini Press

Andrew Montgomery, Old Master Tulips 

The setting for Montgomery’s spring still-life shoot was the farmhouse owned by garden designer Arne Maynard. ‘It was cold when we picked the tulips, so we had to spend most of the shoot coaxing them to open, using steam from boiling water,’ he says. His inspiration for the style of image came from Old Master paintings. ‘I used soft and diffuse natural light from a window, which makes the flowers come alive in the image,’ he continues. ‘The tulips weren’t arranged. I’m a great believer in it being an organic and natural process. The way I put them in the vase and the way they settle is how I shoot them.’ 

Montgomery’s latest book, Winter Gardens, is available from montgomerypress.co.uk 

SEE 

• Wildlife Photographer of the Year Natural History Museum, London; until 5 June; nhm.ac.uk 
• Landscape Photographer of the Year, for news on the 2022 touring exhibition, see lpoty.co.uk 
• International Garden Photographer of the Year, for details of the 2022 touring exhibition, see igpoty.com 
• The beauty of winter gardens – an exhibition of Andrew Montgomery’s images at The Tithe Barn, Thyme, Southrop; until 4 April; thyme.co.uk/exhibition 

SUBSCRIBE

This feature first appeared in the Spring 2022 edition of The Arts Society Magazine, available exclusively to Members and Supporters