Cambridgeshire Ancient Woodland

During the Neolithlic and Bronze ages, the first farmers cleared areas in  West Cambridgeshire that had been covered in prehistoric forest since the last ice age. This continued through to the Anglo-Saxon times. However the heavy boulder clay soil of this area was too difficult to farm and so some areas of the forest were left  - these include my local ancient woodland, Hardwick Wood. The Domesday Book shows that the pattern of woodland fragments in 1086 looked very similar to the pattern of woods that still exist today as ancient woodlands. 

When I walk deeper into Hardwick Wood I feel the pressures and worries of our times evaporate. I hope these IR pictures something of that Ancient Woodland mystery.

Experimenting with Infrared 2

Continuing with my exploration of a Full Spectrum Camera, I tried to document the effects of 4 filters 680/760/850 and 950nm on the resulting photograph (images 3-6). Unfortunately the sun went behind a cloud for the two of the images. These as before RAW images from camera with no further processing. Other images are all full spectrum. 

Full-spectrum Infrared

I had been reading up about how the visible light spectrum varies in animals and was delighted to find a secondhand Full-spectrum IR conversion camera for sale that was within my budget and takes my macro lens. Here are a few images taken mostly with no filters (two used a yellow filter) and no extra processing outside Lightroom, except the last one which has been channel-swapped in Photoshop. 

Points of view in Saffron Walden

Yesterday was our camera club's annual Points of View competition where last year's winner chooses the location and topics. Gaby set it in Saffron Walden and chose the following 5 topics: Market Day, Sweet Things, Bridge End Garden (monochrome), Ancient and Modern, and the Church. Here are a few out takes from these topics plus a couple that I liked though not relevant to the task. I was very pleased with the panorama (8 shots) except for the dominant central figure.

Life in Miniature in the Garden

I decided last week to do a bit of sweep netting on the cut meadow and margins to see what lives at ground level. Before I started the sweep my eye was taken by this very small Pond Olive with spectacular eyes, a relative of the Mayfly. The Leaf Hopper is a miniature version of the Common Leafhopper