I never realised I had arachnophobia until I zoomed into this photo and looked into the spider’s eyes… *shudder*
I think this is a wolf spider, although I’m not sure. I trapped it in a pint glass, and it was big enough to touch the entire rim of the glass with its legs.
This evening in my garden I very nearly walked through a large spider web. I stopped for a second and admired the way the low evening sun was illuminating the spider and web from both sides, and then I rushed indoors and grabbed my macro lens – here’s the result.
Over the Bank Holiday weekend, I visited the Sherwood Forest Center Parcs with Hannah and my family. As usual, I took at least one camera. I decided to take my trusty DSLR, as well a newly-bought waterproof 35mm camera, as we were intending to go swimming and canoeing.
I shall try to piece my holiday together from the various photos I took on my digital and two films. Obviously the digital photos have the time stamped into the file, but the film photos don’t.
Upon arriving at the villa, we had a walk around. The surroundings were very pleasant – lots of trees, and only a few paces to a small lake where there were ducks, swans, moorhens and other birds too.
This duck was paddling cautiously in the shallow part of the lake with all the confidence and enjoyment of a young child on Blackpool beach in November.
Later on, we had a barbecue. As usual, Dad set fire to everything except the coals (but including the food). However, the smoke billowing from our dinner looked pretty as the sun shone through it.
For those who have never been to Center Parcs, there’s a large boating lake with an artificial beach (yep – some 50 miles from the sea!). Now using my waterproof camera, I tried to finish some black & white film so I could get some colour film loaded before we went canoeing.
Walking back to the villa, my brother Oliver passed us on his bike. This photo was my runner-up for the “sport and action” Photo Challenge.
Now with colour film in the waterproof camera, Hannah and I took to the water in canoes.
The lake was too murky to get any decent shots under the water. The camera was great though – not only was it safe when it inevitably got wet, but it floats so you can simply throw it to somebody else. That’s how Hannah took my photo.
After a while our bums were so wet and and our fingers were so cold and numb that we headed back. A little later, I returned to the shore of the lake with my DSLR and a long lens.
These people look like they are having a lovely, relaxing ride in a pedalo.
And these boys are clearly having fun splashing around in canoes.
Unfortunately, this girl and her brother look utterly miserable. I guess the moral of the story is “love many, trust few: always paddle your own canoe”.
I repeatedly forgot to take the waterproof camera to the swimming pool, where the water is actually clear enough for it to be used underwater. Never mind – there’ll be other occasions.
I’ve now owned my Tamron 90mm macro lens for a few weeks, and yet hardly used it. Today I walked to some local woodland and crawled around for half an hour taking photos of insects.
It’s quite hard to hold the camera still enough, and you need a lot of light. You need to keep the shutter short enough that the movement of your hands doesn’t blur the photo (let alone movement of the insect), but at the same time you need to keep the aperture small enough that the depth of field is deep enough to have the whole insect in focus. To counter this, you can increase the ISO speed but this can lead to otherwise poor quality photos.
In the shade of the woodland, there simply wasn’t enough available light for this kind of photography, and I left my macro flash at home. In the areas where there were clearings and strong sunlight, there was enough light for the photography but some of the highlights were burnt out (as in my example).
I will most definitely revisit this woodland with my macro flash and a few hindsight-based ideas on how to get the best out of the lens.
Yesterday Hana and I drove to Blagdon Lake for a walk and a picnic. It seems the sat nav had a bonkers moment and insisted we should go down this road:
No matter where we went after this, it insisted on trying to send us back, so we turned it off. We didn’t have a map, but eventually we somehow managed to find our way to the lake.
Just in time for the rain to begin.
It was grey and horrible with no real opportunities for photos, so we ate our picnic in the car and went home.
I visited my parents this weekend. Both of my brothers were also at home, because their birthdays are both in May.
We were treated to beautiful, sunny weather on Friday. My brothers played hockey in the garden but I was too lazy to join in, so I broke out my telephoto lens and tried my hand at some “sports” photography in the bright sun.
You might have noticed that “sports” was in inverted commas. This is why.
We stayed in the garden until it was dark. There was a slight coolness in the air, but nothing that wasn’t fixed by a hot chocolate!
Later on, the moon was bright and clear.
For Edmund‘s birthday, I gave him a Canon SLR. “Wow!”, you think, “he’s so generous!”. But you can forget about megapixels, gigadoodles and kilowotsits. In actual fact, it was an EOS 500N – a 1996 35mm SLR. He was pleased with it, so on Saturday we loaded up with film and went for a photowalk around Ensor’s Pool, a local wildlife reserve (err.. abandoned quarry). It’s quite scenic, despite being among a load of industrial units.
And here’s the man of the occasion, playing with his new toy.
I also took a photo that I’m likely to enter into this week’s Photo Challenge. The theme is Time, and I think this photo has a double meaning. It’s a moment frozen in time, but it’s also a dandelion clock.
Today’s sunshine found Hana and me on the Downs for a picnic. As usual I brought the camera and managed to snap this photo of a bird taking off.
Unfortunately it’s not in perfect focus because the autofocus on this Tamron 70-300mm lens can only be considered fast by glacial standards.
Fortunately, this cyclist passed around where we were sitting on a perimeter road and I had plenty of time to focus and track him.
At lunchtime today I went for a walk in Royal Fort Garden. It was the first really summery day of the year, and a lovely day to eat lunch outside.
These daffodils are in front of the physics building (left) and Royal Fort House (right).
This robin was very tame. Given that I was sat on the bench, the robin was well within arm’s reach. It had previously been even closer – about a foot behind my neck, but by the time I reached for my camera it had retreated a bit.
While I was distracted with the robin, a squirrel came and sat by my feet too. I felt like Doctor Dolittle!
Incidentally, I had such a pleasant walk that I decided to look up and email the head of grounds and gardens at the University.
Dear Alan,
I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say that Royal Fort Garden is looking absolutely fantastic in the spring sunshine today. The daffodils add a real splash of colour.
Please pass on my thanks to your grounds staff who clearly work so hard to maintain the garden and keep it as an oasis of peace in the middle of a bustling campus.
Best wishes,
Jonathan
And I was pleased to receive his reply…
Dear Jonathan,
Thank you very much for the compliment which we will pass on to Karen and Clayton. As you indicate we are fortunate to currently have such a professional and dedicated team of staff.
Ahhhh spring (at last)!!!
Kind regards
Alan Stealey
Sorry, I’m useless at names of flowers. But these are pretty, and I like the depth of field from my new lens 
