Sunday 27 July 2014

Lazy, crazy, hazy days...

Well for this week at least...summer has arrived...long hot summer days greet me when I wake - it is a delight to be in England when the weather is like this... and we all know to make the most of it as it could break anytime and all will change...

Well the week started with me covering a Concert given by the Sing Choir group of choirs based in this part of Cambridgeshire. Venue was the ever-so-posh Tattersalls Auction Room in Newmarket - I was shooting during the full rehearsal so had to work around lighting and sound guys, but the choir members sang beautifully and I managed to get some nice shots...



















Dropped them off at the clients yesterday - email last night telling me how pleased they are with them - the aim is a happy client...so success...!!!

Well after that and the school portrait shoot the previous Thursday I had a large backlog of images to post process. Now I work on a 10% return - that is 10% of the images I take should be usable. 10% is about average for a working pro... so to get 100 images I have to take 1000. The two shoots mentioned above - yielded just under 1000 images which have produced nearly 200 usable images - so that is a good return. However, they were taken in controlled conditions with uniform lighting.  Natural history is completely different. I usually take about 200 images a day - 1400 a week and usually get maybe 80-100 usable images... you can see the discard rate - the only difference between a pro and an amateur is that the pro deletes more images...  In between editing these images I did manage to get out and about; either onto the fen or along my favourite walk in Ely...




alsike clover...




wasp and figwort




5-spot burnet moth...




6-spot burnet moth....




peacock butterfly...




bristly oxtongue...




speckled bush-cricket...




speckled wood butterfly...




great willowherb...

A nice return from a couple of hours shooting over two two days...

My most recent trips to Wicken Fen have resulted in some of my favourite images (well until the next trip anyway!). The following four images are of wild carrot (Daucus carrota) - sometimes known as Queen Anne's Lace. I have been thinking for a while now about the best way to capture this plant... I think the next few images does it justice...I hope you do too...











Today (Saturday) I had a wander around the fen in the heat of the day... bad for inverts - they move far too quickly when it's hot... but I managed some plants...




Fen bedstraw...




red bartsia...




upright hedge parsley...




yellow rattle...

All of them delightful... but if you want some invertebrates... here are a few from the other day...(they were still hard work)...



banded demoiselle...




brimstone...




cinnabar moth caterpillar - looking like it is about to enter into some sort of alien warfare...





common blue butterfly...




common blue damselfly...





emerald damselfly...





ruddy darter...

So not a bad week really... I am happy with my natural history shots and it is always enjoyable to photograph people - all I need is a model...!

As ever keep up with my comings and goings here... or here... or even...here...

I hope you all have a good week...

TTFN





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