Family Photosession

I don't often post family photos as they have their own blog with lots of photos. Here are Sadie (with my camera phone) and Meredith (with Phil's Fuji) enjoying framing images - the first one is taken by Sadie photographing me, photographing Meredith. While walking around on Lammas land not far from the Cambridge city centre, delighted to photograph a Willow Emerald damselfly showing how common they have become in our region (taken with 50mm Olympus legacy f1.8 lens)

Perfect Day for Gardening But...................

After many days too hot to venture long into the garden, yesterday was ideal to get out there with the seccateurs and start battle with the forest of foliage that needs clearing at the end of each summer. Just as I started around the pond margins, a Southern Hawker decides to lay in the moss right at my feet (image is only cropped in width!) so out comes the camera. Lots of the leaves have young shield bugs that need to be rescued from going in the green bin. Add to this some impressive hoverflies (a daily survey task) and then a favourite minute picture wing fly (c.2mm) and an impressively bristled fly. The green bin did get filled for today's collection but it was touch and go!!

Tate Modern Using Legacy Lenses

I often like to travel with just one prime lens  sometimes using old lenses with appropriate adaptors on my Fuji. Here, two visits to the Tate Modern in London with Canon 15mm fisheye in January (first 6) and Olympus Zuiko 1.8 - both from my film camera days and wide-aperture lenses (f2.8 and f1.8). 

Toft's Apple Recipe Book

Our village is producing a recipe book to celebrate Apple Day on October 5th and our Community Orchard. Last night, we photographed the dishes that will be in the book - here are a few of the finished dishes. 

Photographing Crystals

Some time ago I purchased a Photix transmitter and two receivers to do table-top and macro photography and thought I better get them out and practise some techniques. The receivers work with any flash guns so I was using one small Fuji and one old manual Metz each side of a light tent with black back and base. My granddaughter and I have been growing monoammonium sulphate crystals from a supersaturated solution, some with a blue seeding solution and the rest on a porous base. It crystallized as elongated tetragonal prisms or needles. 

 

  

Approach with Caution

In late summer, the predominate hedgerow invertebrates are spiders of all colours and form. Here a pair of Garden Cross spiders - unusually the male on the right is not much smaller than the female but he is still approaching very tentatively. Many males get regarded as prey and killed an eaten even before mating - seems a bit contrary to species survival though certainly ensures only the 'most-cautious' genes get passed on. The colony of Wasp spiders local to us is still doing well - hopefully soon time for the female to build their cocoon nest and lay eggs.

 

Softer Side of Scotsdales flowers

The first 6 images are taken using a cokin filter that hadn't seen the light of day since my film days. It has a central and several surrounding clear holes on a diffusing background. It worked best with light backgrounds and overexposing as in image 4 gave particularly interesting images. The last four images are taken at f1.8 with a manual Olympus lens on my Fuji.