Last summer, I visited one of the least-visited, least-livable, most-mysterious corners of the world—Axel Heiberg Island in the Canadian High Arctic, just west of Ellesmere Island. How remote is this place?

It wasn’t until 1927 that a Canadian actually set foot on the third-largest uninhabited island on the planet, lying in a region of the Arctic long known by the Inuit as Inuit Nunangata Ungata, or “the land beyond the land of the people.”

Our small party trekked inland from the iceberg-clogged coastline, past desiccated gypsum hills and along the shores of an azure lake. Then came a labyrinth of eroded canyons, leading steadily up, towards unremitting plains of burnt red rock and mocha-brown earth.

It was days later, while we were lost amid the glaciers and high peaks of the island’s central spine, that the summer storm descended.

Waiting Out the Storm

For 72 hours, a biting wind brought heavy, damp snows, and the four of us sought shelter under a silicon tarp held by ski poles, gnawing on scant sausage and smoked cheese rations. When the storm at last eased, we struck westwards, following a deep valley between rocky ridges and globular, toffee-like glacial toes towards the distant coast.

Without warning, T-shirt weather descended. Flies and bees appeared, flitting across the tundra, buffeted by steady winds. Cottongrass and pale yellow Arctic poppies pressed up towards the sun. A chocolate-brown fox visited our camp, rolling in the grass at our feet, sniffing the edges of our tarp and then bounding away.

Well Worth the Wait

And then, amidst the unremittingly harsh landscape, we stumbled upon one shimming yellow hillside after another, huge swaths of barron land in bloom with yellow arnica. Our hearts soared. Such abundance in the face of such austerity!

We dropped to our knees and rolled among the blooms, laughed and lingered. Of the more than 5,000 photographs I took during the two-week traverse, it is the images of flowers that most strongly conjure the Canadian High Arctic’s constant and delicate balance between life and death.

In Canada, as elsewhere, spring is marked by an explosion of wildflowers. With strong primary colours and their spill of profusion, flowers offer a stirring symbol of renewal. The discovery of each new patch offers opportunities for macro close-ups, landscape images and abstracts. And, just like brilliant sunsets or cute puppies, photographs of flowers have a universal attraction. 

Right across the country, these delicate beauties are patiently waiting beneath our winter snow, ready to pop up with the coming warmth. Here are some tips on where to find fields and dales of colour near you, and how to capture the glory when you do.

How to Shoot Wildflowers

Take your time when photographing wildflowers—take off your backpack and settle in. Circle the swath of colour, experimenting with different backgrounds and different compositions. I’ll often shoot hundreds of images before finding that magical one that really moves me

If you have a companion with you, don’t be afraid of asking them to tiptoe out amidst the profusion. Adding a human element is powerful, and it can easily be done without harming the flowers.



Get down

Instead of standing when taking flower pictures, try getting on your knees, or, better yet, lying down. This will help fill the background with colour, and make a sparse patch appear lush.



Zoom

Don’t get too close. Instead, move away from the flowers and zoom in. This will compress background blooms, adding further to the sense of abundance. Wide-angle lenses do the opposite, and space the flowers out.



Open up

Try setting your camera to aperture priority (AV mode) and selecting the smallest number you can. This will create a shallow depth of field, making background flowers blur into a gorgeous, continuous swirling mix of colour.

Share Your Photos

Do you have some great photos that you'd like to share? Upload your wildflower photos, or any of your top travel photos, to our Flickr group.

Photos by Bruce Kirkby