My little wasp bringing home another spider. This was an accidental shot as the wasp has already landed and took off again just as I hit the shutter. It would never win prizes but it's a great bit of behaviour to capture anyway.
And speaking of behaviour I've been watching the moss carder bee males ambushing the females in the nepeta. You can just see her antennae poking out from inside the flower. The males have amazing eyes. This sun is great for insects but terrible for photography sadly.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
These warm nights have been amazing for moths. I've found quite a few new species in the last few days. Most of the photos have been crap but this Early Thorn I just found was a very willing subject. I think he's just proud of his eyebrows.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
A flurry of moths last night has pushed me up to 80 confirmed species from the garden now. This one was last night's highlight: The July Highflyer. Really hard to get a good photo of this one as the green colour is light reflective like a peacock feather so the camera struggles to pick it up. It was really bright green to the naked eye and you can just about see how shiny it looks. A new book just came in the post today too, "Much ado about mothing"
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
@wild edges - do you have any very basic tips for taking photos of plants or insects in daylight. I'm finding capturing reds and whites quite hard as there is so much glare. With white roses, for example, to the east, if the sun is in the east behind the plant, the sun is right in the lens. If the sun is to the west, it's shinging right on the petals and I get too much glare. If I wait until the sun has gone down, the light isn't strong enough... Any thoughts. Thanks
The most basic tip is to learn to correct your mistakes in photoshop. That gets me out of trouble most of the time I use Photoshop Elements which is fairly basic but a few tweaks of the shadows and highlights can fix most problems. Does your camera have a metering gauge built in? Mine has a really nice simple one on one of the display settings which can make it much easier to get close to the right settings. On a sunny day I can set the ISO to 100, pick the aperture that suits the lens and subject (f.8 to f.11 usually) and then use the shutter speed setting to get the metering to the right spot.
White flowers or shiny insects are almost impossible to photograph in the sun without using some kind of diffuser shade to reduce glare though. It's easy enough to knock up a DIY diffuser to give it a go.
If you can keep your head, while those around you are losing theirs, you may not have grasped the seriousness of the situation.
Posts