Wideangle Common Darter

This summer I have enjoyed showing insects in their environment using my Tokina 35mm macro lens, as may have become evident from earlier posts.

Here are 2 more examples of this style of photography. They show a female Common Darter dragonfly photographed at a local nature reserve on a cool, blustery day. The cool conditions meant the dragonfly was approachable and the cloud cover provided some nice soft light, great for showing off dragonflies' wings. The wind was a pain and so I had to carefully time my shots between gusts but I was quite pleased with how these 2 turned out.

 PLEASE CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

Badger Cull

While there's no denying that TB in cattle is a serious problem, an objective, dispassionate, review of the evidence suggests that culling badgers is unlikely to be the solution and could even make it worse. Despite this, the government has decided to begin such a cull with the aim of removing at least 70% of all badgers in target areas.

If you oppose this cull then please sign the government petition below:

Stop the Badger Cull

Meet Your Neighbours: Damselflies 2

Following on from this previous post, here is another selection of damselflies photographed this summer for the Meet Your Neighbours project.

PLEASE CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

First an Azure Damselfly close-up:

and another dew-covered Azure damselfly:

a male Emerald Damselfly:

and a female Emerald Damselfly:

and a male Emerald Damselfly close-up:

and, finally, a Large Red Damselfly:

BWPA 2012

I'm very pleased to say that my image below has been Highly Commended in the 2012 British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPA). The image is of a Brown Hawker dragonfly taken early in the morning with a fisheye lens. It features in the 'Habitat' category of the competition.

These awards are a great showcase of both British wildlife and British wildlife photography and I'm looking forward to attending the awards ceremony next week. My image will feature in the BWPA book and in various exhibitions around the country, starting at the Mall Gallery in London.

The winning images and a small selection of the Highly Commended images can be found on the BWPA website

PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Dew Covered Dragonfly

In a recent post I described an early morning shoot in July that took place in very damp, misty conditions. These conditions resulted in a heavy dew that covered plants and insects alike in millions of tiny water droplets. In addition to the Small Skipper butterfly featured in that previous post, I was also fortunate to find a Common Darter dragonfly whose wings really showed off the dew to full effect.

The following images were taken over the space of about an hour with the amount of dew declining over that period as the sun slowly burned through.

PLEASE CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM

All images taken with a Tokina 35mm macro lens (on a Canon 7D)