Practical Photography magazine

I'm afraid things have been a little hectic in recent months hence the lack of posts on this blog. But just to prove I'm still alive here's an article in the latest (August) issue of Practical Photography magazine featuring my images and some of my text.

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This issue of Practical Photography has a large section on wildlife photography containing images and tips from Mark Hamblin, Laurie Campbell, Ben Hall, Stefano Unterthiner (and, rather flatteringly, yours truly).

I should perhaps add that I wasn't responsible for the use of the word 'minibeasts' in the title (!) or the recommendation to fire a fast burst of images when taking macro. That is not a technique I would ever personally use when shooting static insects and would only consider it for photographing a moving target such as a dragonfly in flight.

Miscellaneous Images

A few miscellaneous images from last summer that didn't make it into any previous blog posts.

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A pair of Red and Black Froghoppers

A Soldier Fly

A Blue-Tailed Damselfly

A Small Skipper Butterfly

A newly emerged Six-Spot Burnet Moth

and finally, a Damselfly freshly from its exuvia

Top 10 Images of 2015

A house move and significant new responsibilities in my day job have meant it's taken me 5 weeks to get around to posting my favourite images of 2015. Better late than never I hope!

Looking back at my reviews of previous years they strike me as rather self indulgent (!) so I won't bother with a review of 2015 other than to make a couple of brief comments. I took fewer photos than in previous years largely due to house renovation and the job responsibilities referred to above but, for some reason, I published far more articles and images in magazines than in previous years (previous blog posts will refer to some of these). I also had an image Highly Commended in the British Wildlife Photography Awards which was nice. In terms of my actual photography in 2015 I particularly enjoyed playing with my new Laowa 15mm wideangle macro lens and several of the images below were taken with that lens.

Despite not taking a huge number of images in 2015 there were a few that I liked. So what follows are my favourites based on my entirely subjective preferences.

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I always enjoy seeing Tawny Mining Bees in spring and was particularly pleased to capture this female against a blue sky

 The first of my images taken with the Laowa 15mm macro. This is a Blue-Tailed Damselfly photographed early in the morning

Another bee in sunshine, this time an Andrena Haemorrhoa mining bee

A Brown Lipped Snail in its aquatic habitat, taken with the Laowa 15mm

A backlit Drinker Moth caterpillar

A wideangle Blue-Tailed Damselfly

and a wideangle Common Darter

The smaller fly on the left had caught and was devouring the larger fly (more info here)

This image is perhaps nothing special as a standalone image but this was the first time I'd seen a Roesel's Bush Cricket at my small local reserve

and finally another wideangle Common Darter

So perhaps not the most varied selection of images but they're all images that I enjoyed taking for various reasons.

More images taken with the Venus Laowa 15mm wideangle macro lens

Back in August I posted this review of the Venus Laowa 15mm wideangle macro lens. It's taken me a while to get around to it, but here are a few more images taken with this lens during a couple of early morning sessions in August.

I should perhaps add that my views of the lens haven't changed. I still consider it to be an excellent lens that is capable of taking unique images but it isn't the easiest lens to use. My review above elaborates on these points.

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Common Darter Dragonfly

Six-Spot Burnet Moth

Common Darter Dragonfly

Blue-Tailed Damselfly

Brown-Lipped Snail

Blue-Tailed Damselfly

Common Darter Dragonfly

 Common Darter Dragonfly

and for completeness, here's a Fly Agaric from November

BBC Wildlife Calendar 2016

BBC Wildlife calendars - free each year with the December issue - have adorned the wall of my office for many years. I'm therefore very pleased to have one of my images included in the 2016 calendar. The image is a close-up of a Brown Hawker dragonfly and provides the image for April.

As usual the calendar features some excellent images from photographers such as Andy Rouse, Daisy Gilardini, Stefano Untertheiner, David Tipling, Suzi Eszterhas and Elliott Neep. I'm very honoured to be included in such company.

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Fly Agarics

I haven't done a great deal of photography lately but here are a few Fly Agaric images from late September.

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This first image was taken with the Venus Laowa 15mm wideangle macro lens:

... as was this image:

 Finally, I switched to my Sigma 150mm macro lens:

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015

The winners of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition were announced yesterday. This is always an important day in the wildlife photography calendar and one I look forward to each year. The overall winner was a powerful image by Don Gutoski showing the brutal aftermath of a battle between a red fox and an Arctic fox. The winning and commended (now called 'finalist') images can be found here.

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'A Tale of Two Foxes' by Don Gutoski

I think 'A Tale of Two Foxes' is an excellent image. It is powerful, unusual, well composed (I like the symmetry of the foxes' heads) and tells a story. One can only imagine such encounters between red and Artic foxes will become more commonplace as climate change extends the range of the former into that of the latter.

In my view the competition features some inspirational images this year. There are a number that I particularly like but the following are some of my favourites:

'Shadow Walker' by Richard Peters 

 'Still Life' by Edwin Giesbers

'Battling the Storm' by Vincenzo Mazza - 

this image doesn't quite work for me until you spot the Whooper Swans on the water. 

'A Whale of a Mouthful' by Michael Aw

'Sea Eagle Snatch' by Auden Rikardsen 

(this formed a part of the portfio prize and Rikardsen's portfolio as a whole is very impressive)

...and there are several others that I really like too.

I was particularly keen to see the images in the Invertebrates category. Within this category I try to imagine which image I would have been most pleased to see on the back of my camera. By this yardstick, of the 4 winning and finalist images, my favourites would be 'Waiting for the Sun' (below) and 'Wings of Summer' by Klaus Tamm. These are the two images I would have been most keen to rush home and process had I taken them! I notice that this category only features 4 images - all other categories feature at least 5 I think. One can only assume that the judges felt that only 4 invertebrate images met the required quality standard which perhaps reflects a lack of submissions of invert images or just a general dearth of quality. Both are slightly troubling and suggest that the competition is still struggling to cast off its recent reputation for 'not really doing insects'. By comparison, the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards always features a much larger, and often higher quality, selection of insect images. Hopefully, the presence of the dedicated Invert category (introduced last year) will result in a greater number of high quality insect images being submitted to WPOTY.

'Waiting for the Sun' by Edwin Giesbers (again!)

Overall, I think the judges have done an excellent job this year. All decisions are of course highly subjective and one can never fully agree with all of them. But, this year's winners contain a number of highly original images featuring a wide selection of subject matter. The reduced emphasis on flagship species is very welcome.

However, I can't resist the urge to have a slightly mischievous moan. In my WPOTY blog post 2 years ago (here) I was critical of the number of similar images in recent years and I highlighted the 3 images below

WPOTY 2010 by Marcelo Krause

WPOTY 2012 by Luciano Candisani

WPOTY 2013 by Jordi Chias Pujol

all of which seemed to suggest that the judges couldn't resist side-on head shots of aquatic reptiles! As if to maintain this tradition, this year's competition contains the following image:

'Cuban Survivor' by Mirko Zanni

Individually, all of these are very nice images but given the presence of the previous images, I still struggle a little to understand how this latest image was deemed to be sufficiently original to see off competition from over 42,000 other images.

However, I shouldn't end on a negative note as I think this may have been one of the best WPOTY for several years. Well done to the winning photographers and to the judges too.