Projects at RSPB Bempton

A second visit to Bempton cliffs yesterday and I decided to concentrate on a couple of projects. First, trying to show the sea birds among the cliff flowers that form their home during the breeding season. Red Campion, Hogweed, Sea Matweed and Plantain are the predominant flowers. My second project was to try ways of showing the movement of the vast numbers of sea birds in and out of the cliffs. Here time-lapse flight trails show the numbers of birds going in and out of the cliffs.

Summer Cemetery

Not often the a Travelodge has a perfect walk to cool off in the evening! Dorking Cemetery is a 14-acre municipal site opened in 1855 though excavations nearby unearthed 14 skeletons dating back to the 7th century, indicating Early Medieval activity in the area. There are several areas where the vegetation hasn't been cut, full of oxeye daisies - ideal for playing with multiexposure.

Entering Another World

I spend a lot of time trying to get sharp accurate images of insects etc for recording purposes so I decided for our CCC outing to Trumpington Meadows to try a softer approach with shallow depth of field and purposely using out-of-focus vegetation to further limit the amount of sharp details. I was lucky with the dull lighting which suited the technique. Taken on a Fuji X100V compact with Raynox close up filter at F2 to F5.6. The original idea was to photograph the buttercups but ran out of time other than the multiexposure and a couple of close ups

My Wildlfe Garden April 28th 2026

Each year, I photograph the species in bloom in my Cambridgeshire garden several times during the spring and summer to compare with previous years. Today, I did a quick photoshoot in my garden which is a riot of colours and full of flora and fauna - not my best efforts photographically but demonstrate what I am sure others in this area are finding that the species in bloom are about a month earlier than previous years - Ann Miles Blog: My Wildlife Garden in May. The insects and spiders are also very active in the warm temperatures - I hadn't noticed the Cricket Bat Spider on the Spurge or the Collembolid on the buttercup till I looked at the photos.

Raindrops on Flowers

Spent a short while in the garden yesterday photographing some of the flowers still in bloom and berries covered in droplets. I was using an old manual Olympus lens which gives very gentle backgrounds and seemed to suit the low light conditions. I need to be a bit more careful with my focusing however.