What you need to know before you photograph your dog in bluebells.
Bluebell season is here! But before you head out with your dogs (or family), there’s something you should know.
Every spring, social media fills up with images of dogs sitting or lying in thick carpets of bluebells. The photos look beautiful, but once these iconic flowers are trampled, they struggle to recover, and repeated damage can stop them returning altogether.
Bluebells can take years to establish – from around five to seven from seed to flower, crushing their leaves prevents them from photosynthesizing and storing energy in the bulb, often killing the plant or preventing flowering for years.
That’s not to say you can’t create fabulous photos, but we can do it with care, and maybe use your photos to raise awareness too? Here are a few tips to keep your photos beautiful and bluebell friendly:
- Try and steer clear of popular bluebell spots, it’s likely that these will already have a lot of damage because of general footfall. Ask around to see if there are any local to you where you can take a few careful shots. You don’t actually need a huge amount to create some beautiful photos.
- Stick to natural paths – Most bluebell woods have little trails running through them. These are the perfect spots to position yourself and your dog for a photo.
- Change your angle – Try shooting from your dog’s level or even lower. Not only does it make for a more compelling image, but it allows the bluebells to frame the photo naturally, without your dog needing to be in them. If you get low with your camera (or phone!), you can create the illusion that your dog is sitting in the bluebells, when they’re actually on a clear patch.
- Please don’t pose your dog on the flowers – Even just one photo where a dog is sitting in a bed of bluebells can cause long-term damage. And it sets the wrong example as others may copy.
- Unless your dog has a solid wait, keep them on lead and just drop the lead low so it’s out of shot – don’t let your dog run directly through the bluebells.
As dog owners and photographers, we have a responsibility to tread a little more carefully. It doesn’t take much, but it makes a huge difference and allows others to be able to appreciate this gorgeous spectacle for years to come.
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