Dragonflies (Again!)

After a week of cool and cloudy days, we were very lucky that the sun shone and the temperature was reasonable for today's RPS Nature Group and CCC visit to Burwash Farm. Each of the six ponds had its patrolling Emperor dragonfly and by the afternoon there were quite a few laying females. I used manual focusing as the constant ripples and movement of the foliage prevented the autofocus picking up the moving dragonflies. I was surprised to find in one of the shots, the Emperor Dragonfly was doing a roll of victory as it passed me.
By the afternoon there were plenty of Common, Azure and Blue-tailed Damselflies.

Enjoying Grantchester

A few images taken around Grantchester Meadows with the infrared camera

Story of a Fox

I have been starting to sort through my Swiss holiday images and thought I would record the tale of the Fox as a lesson on keeping your longest lens on the camera when walking. I had been photographing flowers and was in a bit of a hurry to get the train back to Wengen so did not change to longer lens. Round the corner comes this bold fox carrying a discarded sandwich so the first shot was with the 50mm (fortunately not the 24mm). He came pretty close so a reasonable shot was had before he headed off into the rocks on the left. As I had a hard-boiled egg left over from lunch (dyed an orange colour!), I threw this for him as delaying tactics while I changed lenses. It worked and with my 70-200 mm I was able to get closer photos as he buried the egg and then went back to retrieve more discarded lunch.

On the Tour

A few images of the hundreds of groups that pass through the Wengen area every day - they have one day to enjoy the area before off to Rome or similar.

Goodbye to Wengen

Goodbye this morning - yes it is raining!

Flower Portraits 4

Final day in the Bernese Oberland and a very hot humid one. We walked up from Kleine Scheidegg to Eigergletsch photographing new or attractive flowers. The red campion comes under the latter and is there in its masses. I liked this single spike. Interesting comparison - lefthand with G12, righthand with 5D and 24mm lens. Round-headed Rampions for Tricia.

Moonrise Swiss Style

Specially for Tricia - a truly amazing spectacle last night as the moon rose behind the Silberhorn while the mountains were bathed in alpenglow. I know that people are going to say the moon was added! I continued to take photos after the glow had faded. Later, when the moon was higher in the sky, the mountain range lit by moonlight.

Mixed Day for Photography

Today was dry and sunny after a misty start, so we did the Mannlichen walk.
The 24mm lens is my favourite for alpine flower photography but I also tried it with an extension ring. With the 25mm ring the focus is very close and the depth of focus very narrow as seen with the Sainfoin flower. Using a 12mm ring proved very useful for photographing small flowers such as this White orchid.
As well as many new species of flowers, I also had the privilege of photographing a dragonfly that had just emerged, an incredible cloud formation against the north wall of the Eiger and a very tame Fox.

Flower Portraits 3

Same weather pattern today with bright sunshine and clear skies in the morning but with thunder clouds building to give rain in afternoon. You can see the progress of the weather through the flower images that I took today.

Flower Portraits 2

Today we went up Schynige Platte, which is a 2000 metre limestone plateau fabulous for flowers. Unfortunately we only got a couple of hours photography before a hail and rainstorm stopped play. Here are Arnica, Dark Vanilla Orchid, Round-headed Orchid, Purple Gentian and Yellow Gentian.

Flower Portraits 1

Started to work on technique with the Tilt and sift lens - slow progress as it involves manual settings and difficult camera positions.

jungfraujoch

As the weather looked fine for the morning, we decided to take our one trip through the Eiger up to the Jungfraujoch. The station where the train arrives is just off to the left on the first image and the Observation building can be seen in the second image. The choughs were amazingly tame - great fun with their yellow beaks and red legs.