It has been a long, cold, wet and windy winter where I live but at last the signs of spring are well and truly here. That means increased opportunities to get out with my camera and capture the first photographs of the new season.

Yet the dilemma for any photographer is that spring photography can tend to be very similar from year to year. There are the first spring flowers, new growth on trees, better light and occasional dramatic sunrises or sunsets, yet most of the photographs we produce can be repetitive. I am guilty of this, and many of my spring image collections don't vary much from year to year. I have tended to photograph daffodils and tulips, singly or in groups, but, beautiful as these flowers are, the photographs tend to be a bit mundane and boring after a while.

So this year I decided to take a new approach.

This year I asked myself,

What can I do differently this year?

How can I become more creative with my spring photography?

I have focused on 7 ideas that might inject a bit of creativity into my spring photography in this new season.

# Take a different perspective

The flowers and plants that are appearing now are appearing for the first time, and they represent the wonder of this new season, so they deserve to be photographed in a way that brings out their beauty and shows them in all their glory. To do this I decided to pay attention to perspective. I tried to avoid photographing flowers from standing height, but rather attempted to get down low and photograph flowers and plants from where they are. This takes a bit of experimentation with aperture to get the correct focus but you can make creative choices by choosing to have an image that is sharp from front to back or work with a shallow depth of field.

# Pay attention to background

Often we concentrate on the subject we are photographing without paying attention to background, yet a good background can make all the difference to our subject. Looking for suitable backgrounds can add interest to the process of capturing your subject as well as to the images themselves.

# Explore the tiny world

A macro or close-up lens will allow us to explore the tiny world which is exploding around us in spring. I enjoy macro and close up photography and look forward to having an abundance of subjects to photograph as nature comes to life again after the winter.

# Use a supporting subject

A daffodil or a tulip can create a captivating photograph on its own, but add context and you create a story to go with the subject. Are the flowers growing along a winding pathway? Are they close to a building or trees? Are they in a woodland or a garden? Using supporting subjects will add interest to your composition and give you many different scenarios to photograph.

# Look for something different

# Try some intentional camera movement or abstract images

# Incorporate a theme such as growth and change or new life

By incorporating a theme we give ourselves greater inspiration to look for multiple and varied compositions that fit into that theme. We are not confined to photographing the obvious subjects and we can get creative with our photography.

Do you have any creative ideas to enhance your spring photography?