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.

Insectivorous Plants

During our CCC day at Scotsdales (more to Follow!!), I took the opportunity to focus stack 4 types of insectivorous plants as detail is really eseential to appreciate the amazing structures in these small carnivores. 25 images taken on focus bracketing with Fuji XT2 hand held and stacked with Zerene stacker.

Cambridge and its Bicycles

Camcycle are organising a Cycling Festival in Cambridge during September and. along with John Lewis, who are putting on an appropriate display in their store, asked CCC to submit some images. Here are a few I took yesterday in the sunshine (you may get the rainy set sometime but I seem to have shared a lot of wet images recently!). The difficuly was getting images without large masses of 'untidy' tourists in the frame!

 

 

 

London in the Rain 3. Southbank Reflected

I was trying for that Cartier Bresson moment of leaping a puddle, but had to be content with mobile phones and an obliging seagull!