Where Have All the Butterflies Gone?

We are on our way down to Bournemouth for 5 days at the Bournemouth Airshow and stopped en route for the night at Fordingbridge so we could visit the nearby National Nature Reserve at Martin Down, renowned for its butterfly population. The weather was not ideal with light cloud and a bit of a breeze early on. All the butterflies that we found were low down in the vegetation and very few in number. We did find Dark-freen Fritillary adn Chalkhill Blue but no sign of the Adonis Blue or Grizzled and Dingy skippers. A large number of the butterflies had mite infestations as with the Common Blue and Meadow Brown shown below. Great to see a few Clouded Yellows even if deep in the vegetation. Even when the sun appeared there were very few butterflies in the air - strange when the flowers were so inviting

Fordingbridge in the evening sunshine.

Monochrome Details from the Garden

Saturday was a day of sunny intervals.  I loved the shapes of the poppy seedhead and the Green Shieldbug but, with the sun out, there was a lot of contrast making straight nature photography difficult as the shadows were difficult to fill even with fill-in flash. I decided to try a monochrome version and liked it so much a few others followed! These are done in the Raw converter only - I will redo in Silver Efex. When the sun was behind a cloud,  the softer light on the poppy and bug gave lovely subtle colours.

Wedding at Paddock House, Newmarket

On Friday, Phil and I photographed Sarah and Steve's wedding at Paddock House Newmarket, a very historic venue. It was originally the home of Augusta Leigh, Byron's half-sister and with whom he is thought to have had an incestuous affair leading to the birth of her third daughter,  Elizabeth Medora Leigh (Medora was one of Byron's heroines).
Unfortunately, the weather was not kind to us and persistent rain meant we couldn't use the extensive grounds for the photographs. The interior, although very grand, is a photographer's nightmare - limited windows, lots of dark wood, often too high ceilings for bounce flash, and yellow lampshades etc. It is an attractive venue and the bride (and groom!) looked stunning.

Wicken Fen - Arrivals at the Ugly Bug Ball

As with many outings recently, the promised sunshine for Wednesday's CCC trip to Wicken Fen did not arrive till 4pm when we had all started for home. However, after a morning playing with filters and landscape photography, we migrated into the Fen and started the ugly bug hunt. Among the prize winners were this fly, a Picture Wing fly (Dasymetopa species), Speckled Bush Cricket, Meadow Grasshopper, a rather shy Short-Winged Conehead, a Green Capsid, a very small beetle (Oulema melanopus), a snail with the fly whose larvae eat snails (Ilione albiseta) and various Hoverflies on Fleabane flowers.

Using a Simple Light Tent

 Yesterday was Cambridge Camera Club's Know Your Camera Day, theory in the morning and then play in the afternoon. My task was Table-top photography using a light tent (around £10 without lighting as here or around £25 with lighting http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Photo-Studio-Camera-Lighting-Light-Softbox-Cube-Light-Tent-Tripod-Backdrops-Kit-/371408215846). Here we used either in-camera flash or a flash mounted on the hot-shoe to fire two slave flashes (the small flashmate on the right is unfortunately not made now as far as I can see but was £4.99 when bought -great little gadget; the Canon 270exII is current model and is around £90). The inset shows shadowing when first set up as the front flash is overpowering the side flashes. The easiest solution is to turn down the flash compensation by a couple of stops (or until balanced) and/or move side flashes nearer. We then added a white cloth to the background to give a continuous backdrop.

I have used this set up for several of my competition entries eg Spots

Hummingbird Hawkmoth

This amazing Hummingbird Hawkmoth visited our buddleia this morning - not for long and high up but managed to grab a shot with the telephoto lens. Taken at 1/1600th second and no flash so there is still wing movement which I like. Unfortunately it was close (Full frame here)  so depth of field is not quite enough to cover the whole body

Chiltern Orchids

On our way back from Aston Rowant, Richard Revels showed us a few orchid sites, mostly along the roadside verges near Prices Risborough. The first is the Violet Helleborine with comparison pictures taken without and with off-camera flash (transmitter on camera and flash held a distance away to give extra lighting to just the flower spike), a technique I had not tried before. Also shown are the Broad-Leaved and Narrow-Leaved Helleborines. The light was very dull by this stage so difficult to achieve sufficient depth of field but good enough to show the features. Richard is coauthor of a book of Wild Orchids of Bedfordshire for anyone wanting to know more about these fascinating species.

Aston Rowant National Nature Reserve

As always we were hoping for a warm sunny day for our visit to Aston Rowant NNR on the Chilterns but we had only a brief sunny interlude in an otherwise overcast and breezy day. Thank you Jill for showing us the reserve which looks down on the M40 and to Richard for taking us there and sharing his expertise. Chalkhill Blues were fairly abundant but the windy conditions didn't help the task of getting an attractive composition as they were mainly on the ground. The target species was the Silver-Spotted Skipper and we did manage to find a few individuals but they proved very elusive. The best place was the bare soil/chalk patches where they were warming up, here in the company of a CHBlue and a Kite-tailed Robberfly.The flowers were great including this Clustered Bellflower and a Wild Candytuft. I spent a time photographing a Burnet Moth and cocoon and other insects (orange fly, not yet identified, and a Digger Wasp, Ectemnius spp)