Cromer Storm Clouds and Afternoon Light

After a beautiful sunny clear morning on Wednesday, storm clouds gathered at Cromer and we had a heavy rainstorm which cleared to give some very attractive late afternoon light.

Epping Forest Workshop

Yesterday's weather was not kind to our RPS Nature Group workshop on Macro and Focus stacking in Epping Forest with very dull conditions all day. I was using my wide angle set up plus an LED light which proved fine when there was a distant background but rather too contrasty for close backgrounds - a lesson learned I hope! With the increased visitor activity since our last RPS visits to the Forest, large fungi were hard to find but there were plenty of small specimens. Many thanks to Duncan and Qasim for their tuition during the day.

Flies and Fungi

The Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) gets its name from the tradition of using this mushroom as an insecticide. In some European countries, caps are crumbled up and placed in saucers of milk to attract house flies. The flies drink the milk, which contains ibotenic acid that not only attracts flies but also poisons them. Certainly in the field, I haven't seen flies visiting Fly Agarics while other species are a great attraction. Sandy RSPB reserve had abundant fungi yesterday, including some very magnificent Parasols in the large meadow by the house.

Cromer Beach at Low Tide

Yesterday's tide was one of the lowest of the year and coincided with a very sunny warm day (until the rain arrived!). Just right for reflections on the wet sand and interesting foreground details!

Half Marathon Continued

I took some wide angle shots at the half marathon, some panned at 1/125th sec to give an idea of movement. The wide view is taken at the bottom of the 'hill' while the cheerful faces are at the top of the hill where a great team of supporters were encouraging the runners to get to the top. 

Cambridge Half Marathon

I agreed to take images of some runners in the Cambridge Half Marathon representing the Sports Connections Foundation Charity so we found a good spot to watch the runners with the aim of identifying and photographing their 11 runners out of the 15000 runners. All we know was they were wearing red T-shirts with their charity logo. Well we managed to snap 7 of their runners but also had an enjoyable time watching the race unfold. Here are the first runners through our 'checkpoint' at 7+ miles. Jonathan Escalante-Phillips was the final winner in 1 hour and 6 mins and many of the runners whose numbers can be read in this top group finished within 1 hour 12 mins.