Orchids

Cambridge Botanic Gardens had a great display of Orchids in the corridor of the glasshouses when we visited last week. These are in-camera composites that remind me the delight of these amazing flowers amid the light and the textures around them.

Autumn at the Botanic Gardens

Beautiful warm sunshine for our CCC visit to the Cambridge Botanic gardens. Not the best autumn for colours but there were some beautiful vivid areas of orange and yellow.

Botanical Studies

Barry and Ken ran a very enjoyable workshop yesterday with Still-life as its theme and invited everyone to contribute some subjects - this resulted in a wonderful collection of vegetables, fruit, flowers, vases, memorabilia etc. I spent all afternoon photographing the different glass vases and bottles plus flowers that were contributed. Unfortunately, I managed to delete the folder of images before downloading but hope to retrieve at some stage. So here are my morning offerings using a lightbox and overhead lighting (continuous or flash), plus a bottle and hops with a light pad back illumination and a shell lit by studio flash. Hopefully my main project will rise from the ashes for later sharing

Orchids, Moths etc at Buxton Heath

Buxton Heath outing was one of the highlights of this year for me with its wide variety of specialized heathland species many of which we managed to see. Here the Marsh Helleborine with its abundant  population of small insects, Southern Marsh Orchids, Beautiful Yellow Underwing caterpillar, Fox Moth caterpillar and Rusty Tussock moth flightless female egg laying. Final three Hoverfly Eristalinus sepulchre, Five-spot Burnet and the Bog Cricket

Dorset 16 Cerne Abbas and Minterne Gardens

On the Friday of our Dorset trip, we visited Cerne Abbas where I walked up to the Long Man. On our last visit in 2018 on an equivalent date, we spent the morning in the company of Marsh Fritillaries and Adonis Blue butterflies but, this year, there were none - hopefully because the season has been much earlier. The views were spectacular and we later visited the poppy fields. In the afternoon, we visited the gardens at Minterne, which was rich in wild flowers as well as cultivated species.