A sudden spell of good weather has brought our local woodland and gardens to life over the past week or so. The weather here, in the South West of England, has been very wet but mild over the winter. So there have been no hard frosts to kill off delicate plants or hold things back.

I’ve never gone out to deliberately shoot spring flowers. In fact I’ve never shot that many flowers at all having read years ago that they’re not wanted by stock libraries. I read that they were overloaded with them. That was bad advice and poor judgement from me because I’ve been missing out. Plus flower pics do sell, and for good fees.

There’s a bit of a twist with this post (quite literally) as the images were all taken using my newly adapted Helios 44-2 vintage lens, which has it’s front element reversed. It’s been a real pleasure shooting with this lens although it behaves like no other lens I’ve ever used before. It’s only sharpish in the middle of the frame. Backgrounds get better as you close the aperture down, opposite to usual, but it also has a point where things get too wacky, just past f11.

The other strange thing with this lens is I don’t really know what I’ve captured until I open the images in Photoshop. I can’t see the full effect of the bokeh in camera so I try to get focus, as best I can and then take a few images at different apertures. I also use Topaz to sharpen up the middle of the image when it’s needed.

It’s all worth the effort though and I really enjoy editing these images. Here’s a few more examples.

I was up at Tyntesfield House just over a week ago and it’s surprising how much things had change there in that time. A lot of the daffodils were already over but so much more has come into flower. I can see my spring flower exercise turning into a much longer project with this lens.

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All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2025 – All rights reserved.