Soham Church Cambridgeshire

 Yesterday was our annual CCC  Points of View Day, this year set in Soham with five subjects to photograph including the church. We had to show its magnificence - not difficult as it is a very impressive building inside and outside. 

The area around St Andrew’s Church has been a place of Christian worship for over 1,300 years. The first Abbey was in use for over 200 years until it was destroyed in AD 869/70 when the Danish ‘Great Heathen Army’ overran East Anglia. It was rebuilt and much of the original 12th century building church is still standing today. Further additions and alterations were made in the 14th and 15th centuries including the construction of the bell tower, clerestory, pews with carved poppy heads, misericords and a tie-beam roof in the nave decorated with carved angels, now sadly lacking their wings. 

Wonders of Camouflage

 It has been a busy week with RPS Assessments and continued work on identifying the 100 or so photos from a wildlife survey at Paxton but I have continued with trying to perfect techniques for very small subjects. We have a lot of Tansy and Carrot flower and seed heads in the garden and on close inspection all kinds of well camouflaged insects/spiders live there. Here some plant bugs, a fly and a green spider -each only a few mm long. Using a continuous light panel to be able to shoot with a smaller aperture.

High Contrast Macro

 A combination of my Zeiss Touit 50mm macro lens and a faulty camera that unexpectedly shot jpegs resulted in some very contrasty image that I felt worth sharing. 

Welney Dragons

There were still lots of Common Darters on the wing at Welney Wetlands Centre together with Southern Hawker and Ruddy Darters. I had an attempt to capture them in flight but difficult to get enough depth of field and shutterspeed (1/400th f16 - 1/2000th f10)  

Insects on Ivy Flowers

The Ivy is just coming into flower and is obviously very attractive to all kinds of insect (and entomologists!) Here a selection of different flies, including many species of Hoverflies, and Ivy Bee, Honey Bee and Common Wasp

Nature Takes Over, Cambridge

 We took an early evening stroll round the University Sidgwick Site in Cambridge, which has not seen students now for over 18 months. The cobwebs, thistles and ivy are beginning to take over. The sun was just setting as we left throwing some lovely colours on the buildings