Last of the Summer ......

My gardening efforts were interrupted yesterday morning by the noise of a flock of around 30 swallows flying around and landing on the television aerials and trees nearby. Down tools and up camera for a session with these wonderful birds presumably having their last feeds before undertaking the flight to Africa. It is more than 10 years since we had a nesting pair in our garage (image 3, 2007) - unfortunately we had to evict them when we needed to convert the garage to a bedroom as our family size increased. The last image shows one of the youngsters taking a nap - it is most likely it is a descendent of our swallow family.

Green Therapy along the River

I have the reputation for finding bright greens in images very distracting so wondered whether images with green as the only colour would work. Images from a walk along the river in Cambridge on the hottest day (so far!) of 2023. With the Chestnuts already turning to autumn hues it certainly simplified the scenes. Last two images playing with different colours.

Evening Panoramas at West Cambridge Site

The main purpose of our CCC outing to the West Cambridge site was to explore panorama photography (with kind permission). These were multishots (up to 7) using Fuji X100V (fixed 35mm equiv. lens) handheld and processed in photomerge option in Lightroom. These are in taking order, starting and finishing with the Schlumberger tents 

Lakenheath Dragons

Thursday's hot weather suited the Damselflies and Dragonflies at Lakenheath; I particularly enjoyed the Willow Emerald which were everywhere through the reserve together with Common and Ruddy Darters and Migrant and Brown Hawkers.

Lakenheath Spiders

Spiders were the most numerous invertebrates at Lakenheath RSPB reserve yesterday - with the temperature reaching 30 degrees they were very active with many males trying their skill at mating. Here Araneus marmoreus and Araneus diadematus with a few extra 'portraits'. The garden spider encounter did not end well with the male taking what looked like a lethal bite. Araneus quadratus were less numerous and escaped my lens. 

Cambridge West Site Panorama Evening

Yesterday evening a group from CCC visited West Cambridge site to take panoramas of the buildings. For some of the time I was using my Sony RX100 Infrared-converted camera to do both panoramas and wide angle shots. These are from the jpegs with a profile applied in camera and then adjusted in Lightroom. Not images that would stand up to scrutiny when printed large but great fun playing with the colour palettes as the light sources changes.