Wildlife Trusts Image Use

It's nice to see some of my images being used by the Wildlife Trusts again, this time in one of their regional magazines ('Local Wildlife'). The main image is mine as are three of the images in the bottom right hand corner.

I'm growing increasingly impatient waiting for for spring to start here in the UK. If it would only warm up a bit then I'm sure the ladybirds would begin to reappear. Alongside daffodils, they mark the start of spring for me and certainly the start of this year's insect photography...

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Wideangle Fungi

I recently posted some Autumn fungi images taken in the Charnwood Forest last November (see here) and in that post I mentioned that I also took some wideangle fungi images on my visits to Charnwood.  These were taken with my Tokina 10-17mm fisheye lens and a selection are provided below.

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The first two are Sulphur Tuft together with some Candle Snuff fungi:

Bracket fungi:

A trio of Amethyst Deceivers:

A finally, a Fly Agaric image from 2011:

Collaboration with Ross Hoddinott

I imagine most readers of this blog are already familiar with Ross Hoddinott and his photography but for those that aren't, Ross is a very talented photographer who specialises in macro and landscape photography. He is the author of numerous books and regularly features in magazines such as Outdoor Photography.

Ross is currently preparing a new book on Macro and Close-up Photography and I'm pleased to say that he has asked me to contribute to one of the chapters. Ross very much favours the use of natural light in his macro photography but was keen for his chapter on lighting to also discuss the use of flash. I have therefore prepared three 'spreads' for the chapter, one on the general use of flash in macro photography, one on the use of ringflash and twinflash and finally one on the use of outdoor studios (e.g. the Meet Your Neighbours style). A number of my images will also feature.

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The book will discuss all aspects of macro and close-up photography and is written in Ross' highly accessible style. It is due out in Autumn and I'm sure I'll do a blog post on it once it is published.

For more information on Ross and his photography click here to visit his website.

Autumn Fungi

Last autumn I made a couple of trips to the Charnwood Forest here in Leicestershire to photograph fungi. The wet weather throughout the summer and autumn months meant I didn't have to look too hard to find some, with Amethyst Deceiver being particularly plentiful.

The main challenges when photographing fungi are to find attractive specimens that have yet to succumb to slugs, that are accessible and have some space behind them to avoid too much background clutter. At times it can seen rather difficult to satisfy these conditions. Nevertheless, on these trips I managed to return with a handful of images that I was reasonably pleased with.

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First, a trio of unidentified mushrooms (probably Mycena sp.)

Secondly, a group of Sulphur Tuft mushrooms

Finally, another trio, this time of Amethyst Deceiver

These three images were taken with a Canon 60D (the articulated screen is great for fungi images) and a Sigma 150mm macro lens. I also took a number of wideangle fungi images with my fisheye lens, I'll include those in an upcoming post.

Migrant Hawker Dragonfly

On a cool, breezy day last September I was lucky enough to find this male Migrant Hawker dragonfly in my garden. He was clearly too cold to fly and actually so cold that some of the normally blue patches on his abdomen had turned grey, something I'd read about before but never seen.

Anyway, it's not everyday that you get the opportunity to photograph a co-operative dragonfly so I took a number of images.

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Buglife

I'm pleased to say that one of my Globular Springtail images is on the front cover of the 'The Buzz', the new magazine launched by the invertebrate charity Buglife.

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Buglife do a great job promoting and protecting invertebrates. More information can be found on their website and they can also be followed on Facebook.

While Buglife do a great job, sadly the designers/printers that they used on this occasion did not do such a great job - they printed the low resolution version of the image. Thankfully it doesn't look too bad but the high resolution version would have looked better!

Miscellaneous Meet Your Neighbours Images

I've had very little opportunity to get out with my camera in recent weeks so I'm still working through images from last summer I'm afraid. I have a number of 'Meet Your Neighbours' images which haven't featured in previous blog posts so I thought I might as well put them all together into one post.

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First, a Drone Fly

A Common Green Grasshopper (I posted a similar image previously but not this actual one)

A Soldier Beetle on a dew covered seedhead

A Small Skipper butterfly

An Oak Bush Cricket

A Common Frog

A Leafhopper - Cicadella viridis

Finally, this next image is something of a rarity. For reasons I'm not entirely sure of, I very rarely photograph plants and flowers. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of flower images that I have taken. Anyway, this flower is called Betony.