A blog on gardening, life by the sea, photography and wildlife

Sunday 6 April 2014

Colour or Black and White

When I started in photography some 50 plus years ago black and white was the expected film medium for home use, with colour processing reserved for the wealthy with deep pockets. I rarely use B and W now but it does sometimes look nice in portraiture. In post editing now with Photoshop 7 digital software that I use it is very easy to convert one to the other.
Here are a couple of quick indoor daylight lit candid shots I took recently in both B and W and colour, I leave it to you to express your own preference.







Friday 4 April 2014

Spring blossom on trees and shrubs and a visit from a sparrowhawk


                                                          Young Sparrowhawk



Plum blossom
Paradise apple blossom

Wednesday 2 April 2014

Macro photos part 2

The problem with macro lenses that have a short focal length (ie shorter that 100mm) is that to get really close to achieve the maximum 1-1 magnification in some instances you end up blocking the light from the subject you are attempting to photograph . I have this problem since my lens is a 40mm 2.8 Micro Nikkor.
One solution is the use of a ring flash or light that surrounds the lens since the standard camera flash is mounted in the wrong place for such shots, or focus back from the subject and post crop the image.
I used an inexpensive LED version of a ring flash for the following pictures of moss and lichen on my brick wall which faces north and is ideal for them. Magnification is close to 1-1 on the pictures

I couldn`t see this tiny 3mm ant on moss with the naked eye until I looked through the macro lens and saw what it was after, young and adult aphids.


first off couldn`t resist this tiny 1cm flower the Common Storksbill
                                                              3 different moss types






Lichen on a brick wall


Morning dew (and aphid) on strawberry leaf

My setup