Spring is here, which means it’s time to dust off the camera bag and head outdoors. I take pictures year round, but winter seems to be my slow period, as drab skies, bone-chilling cold, and a bland, leafless landscape, don’t translate well to knock-your-socks-off type photos. Spring on the other hand not only offers warm temperatures, longer days and an incentive to head to the outdoors, but a palate of colorful budding trees, flowers and shrubs, and skies that offer a variety, from clear and cloudless. to white and puffy, to dark and stormy.
The subject you choose, of course, will largely be determined by what is available. Just because you have a wonderful picture of an old barn taken in the fall, with the vivid colors of the season, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth a revisit in the spring.
Flowers and budding trees and shrubs are a friend to the photographer, as they offer endless options. Spring plants can make for a background, foreground, or subject itself. Many photographers like to focus on closeups and macros of flowers, buzzing bees and insects, budding leaves, and the like.
My current location in the mountains of southern West Virginia, near the Virginia line, gives me a wide variety of options. I’m blessed with old, historic structures, in various stages of repair and disrepair, from the restored to the barely standing. There are old farmhouses surrounded by fields of bailed hay, and country churches that have served their communities for generations. Morning or evening skies over the mountains can offer a touch of color to enhance any subject needing a nudge in that direction. The occasional thunderstorm offers a chance for menacing skies, or a lightning strike, for a change of pace.
My gas tank is full, camera batteries are charged, and I have an area circled on the road map. It’s time for a Springtime road trip along West Virginia’s less-traveled roads.
