Go wild, go wild, go wild in the country...

...where snakes in the grass... yep I grew up in the country and after several years of living in towns and cities I am back in the country. This blog is unashamedly about the countryside - more accurately the nature reserve that lies at the back of our house - Wicken Fen.  I know I have done a lot of shots at the mill recently, so I shall do a blog about that later, probably next week; but with this glorious weather I am going to wax lyrical about my local nature reserve and post some pictures I have taken there.

So, to begin... the house is just in front of the reserve; it almost backs onto the garden so to speak, which means within about 5 minutes walk I can be down on the fen, walking along footpaths aside the Lodes (small water channels), and watching birds, dragonflies and butterflies...

My walk look likes this:

Footpath to the left, Lode fringed with common reed to the right. Other aquatic plants include arrowhead, white and yellow water lilies and amphibious bistort. 

The other side of the track is lined with hawthorn and willow - great for birds and insects alike; and as for plants... well...

the arable weed scentless mayweed...

...hoverfly on bindweed...

creeping thistle seed head...

tufted vetch...

meadow sweet...

amphibious bistort... all of the above are common and all are beautiful; 

So you can guess that I'm glad to be back and glad to be shooting this sort thing again... In my garden I have been having fun with butterflies again...

I never get tired of taking small tortoiseshell pictures... I like the way the glow in light room gives the colours added vibrancy... There will be more HERE and some of the Mill...keep your eyes open for that...

We also built one of these in the garden this morning - an insect hibernacular...

Every garden should have at least one so our crawly friends have somewhere to shelter from the bad weather... go on, you know it makes sense...

So that about wraps it up for this week... hope all is well with you guys...

TTFN

So now comes the tricky bit...

You know, it's easy to do all the talking about setting up a business but now comes the real deal... so I have been busy placing advertisements all over the place and sorting out the tax man etc... The office is coming along nicely, most things have been filed away, spreadsheets updated etc., plus a 5 year old entertained and a new house to be put in order... On top of all that I have to find time to go out and take some pictures would you believe!!!??  I have managed to take a few, but this blog maybe a tad light on new images - apologies for that...

So, what have I been taking? Well mainly wildlife in the garden - it's been ages since I had a garden to play in - well one of my own anyway and the novelty hasn't worn off yet... Plant portraits abound with the occasional invertebrate...

Small tortoiseshell butterfly caterpillar feeding on stinging nettle...

Small garden orb spider in the process of web building...

Gladioli - just gone over now, so a mass of pink-orange petals with no real form but a delightful mess of colours...

European honey-bee - suffering a population crash - I hope they don't disappear otherwise we are in trouble...

Roses going over - I love the textures here as well as the colours..

I have also been looking at pictures from the past as I have to promote myself to prospective clients - I have been posting a few HERE but here is another... Formal Staff Portrait...

Lighting from the side and the front with a third light illuminating the background. Nikon D2Xs + Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 AFD ED; speedlights - 1 Nikon SB-700 and 2 Nikon SB-600 stand mounted - the SB-600s were shot though umbrellas to give a softer light.  The shoot was set up in the office of the client in about 10 minutes and the last shot taken half an hour later.

I've also picked out a couple more portraits I shot a few years back...

A bride from a wedding I shot in 2011 - she was a dream to work with; lovely face and expression. Nikon D200 + Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 AFD ED + camera mounted Nikon SB-600 speedlight fitted with a diffuser to soften the light plus I was about 10 feet away, making the light softer.

Different style here - a young actor looking for images for his book. We tried different looks - this one mean and serious. Nikon D200 + Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AFD + camera mounted Nikon SB-600 speedlight. Here I took the diffuser off and was much closer to the subject giving the harder light... I like this one - there is just enough light to prevent his hair disappearing into the background...

These are the sort of shots that will help bring in work I hope plus this kind of thing of course...

Pictures of beautiful people are always commercial...

Nikon D200 + Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8 AFD ED + camera mounted speedlight Nikon SB-600...

Well, that about wraps it up for this week - I have a shoot at the mill this weekend - environmental portraits etc. plus it is the village flower festival over the three days of the bank holiday so I hope to get some cool shots there.

Hope to see you all next week

TTFN...

There's an old mill by a stream...

Although to be fair, it isn't by a stream... Yep, we have finally moved into our new house - well "new" rented house that is... In the lovely Cambridgeshire village of Wicken, right next door to Wicken Fen National Nature Reserve - couldn't get any better for me really or my boy for that matter; it's just my wife who has to get used to the country. We have only been here a week or so but we have done some gardening, been stung by nettles, snagged by brambles and enjoyed the sun... The highlight for me was starting to record UK Natural History again - today we had migrant hawker and common hawker dragonflies and hornet in the garden... NICE!!

The downside of all that moving about is that I have not been able to take that many pictures recently, and ones I have taken have been posted haphazardly on FACEBOOK; however there will be some to show here... Let's start with one from the dim and distant past...

An old landscape from 2001; taken with a Nikon F90X + Nikkor 28-105mm f3.5-4.5 lens.

We are lucky to have a working mill behind our house - I shall be doing some shots there in the coming weeks, but at the moment I have exterior shots...

Black & white conversion done in Lightroom...

Shadows made by the sails in low evening sun...

Great twilight - you don't get this light in the Gulf...

I have also been shooting some garden plant portraits (as I do)... these yellow compositae are in our garden...

Some more PP in Lightroom...

I really like this glow effect on the flowers...

We have also managed to have some days out - yesterday was to Hunstanton... more opportunities to take the Great British Public on Holiday...

Reading the paper...

Picnicking with a little one...

Riding on horses...

Tidying up... The people change but the behaviour is the same...

Blakeney, Norfolk... a great place to walk, enjoy the fresh air and play in mud...

Some people just like to sit and enjoy company...

...whilst others just sit...

Well that is about it for now... another will follow at the end of the week I hope... so I hope you all have a good week (what's left of it)...

We made it through...

Hope you did too..

TTFN

I don't want to sound complaining...

This week I am going to start with a rant... I don't always rant but today I am going to...

Now I have a smartphone like most of you I would imagine - not a very expensive one, just a middle of the road Samsung Galaxy thing, not cheap, not expensive...  And I use it as you would expect really; I don't listen to music or watch videos, but I make phone calls, send and receive texts and emails; I have Apps for the News, Sport News and Weather (BBC - excellent!), I also have Apps to help me with planning shoots - a compass, sunrise/sunset calculator, tide tables, light meter, depth of field calculator, I have a converter for length, area etc., an alarm clock, guitar tuner, plus the usual calendar, maps, notepad, voice recorder, radio etc. All in all I use it all the time for business and pleasure. It is useful... I also note that all the main phone providers claim something along the lines of 95% coverage throughout the UK... my own provider claims even better coverage as they are in partnership with another company so I get a signal no matter what. BUT... and here is the rant, I always seem to be in that 5% where I don't get a signal... the whole thing grinds to a halt because I keep managing to be in the small (is it so small?) area of England where my phone won't work... Just how accurate are the claims of 95% or am I just unlucky...? hmm....

Now, what have I been up to photographically? Well, still enjoying the garden in this lovely house... flowers, insects etc...

So the aim for the bee shots was to have the plant sharp but the bees not necessarily so - we see them more often than not as a blur in our peripheral vision...

This is my favourite...

I put a bit of a glow on this one...

I also took a fancy to the rose hips... All pictures here taken using a Nikon D2Xs + Nikkor 60mm f2.8 AFD macro lens and a 2x tele-converter. All mounted on a Manfrotto tripod + ball head...

We also had a day trip to Saltburn on Teeside, which was great fun for Quinn, who loves the place and also for me as I was able to capture a few more in the series The Great British Public on Holiday...

The wind farm makes an interesting backdrop - if the government gets its way many seaside resorts will have a similar horizon...

All pictures in this sequence taken using a Nikon D200 + the lenses Nikkor 28mm f2.8 AFD, Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AFD or Nikkor 85mm f1.8 AFS... All post processing done in Light Room...

Yesterday I managed to get up on the Yorkshire Moors - great weather and skies - allowed me to capture some landscapes...

Created in Photoshop CS6 - both panoramas are a composite of 4 images...

I also came across a lovely small moorland pool...

ferns...

and dry stone walls...

These final few are taken using the Nikon D200 + the same three primes...

All in all a fun week even though I have neglected my FACEBOOK page - hopefully from next week I will be posting again... however my WEBSITE is still there...

All the best to you guys and hope to see you next week...

TTFN