Friday 28 February 2014

Experimenting with Springtails

There are very few macro subjects around over the winter months but I can always rely on finding a good number of tiny Globular Springtails on the leaves on my lawn. Normally I would photograph subjects this small using flash alone in order to freeze any possible movement. However, I had a couple of sessions in December and January when I experimented with a mix of flash and natural light (actually direct sunlight). I decided to shoot directly into the sun as the reflections that the sun provided on the wet leaves created some unusual light patterns. The results were inevitably mixed but I quite like the images below as they're a little different if nothing else.

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Saturday 15 February 2014

Last Autumn's Fungi

I'm still processing images from last year but I've at least now finished the handful of fungi images that I took in the Autumn. I only ventured out to photograph fungi on two occasions and neither trip was particularly productive.

Probably my favourite image was this tiny duo of Amethyst Deceiver photographed with a reasonably wide angle macro lens (35mm) to show the fungi in its natural environment.


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I had very little luck with Fly Agarics as I think I missed most of them, but I did manage to find this little one.



I thought this trio of unknown fungi (probably Mycena species) were reasonably attractive.




And finally, here's the Amethyst Deceiver duo again, this time showing the difference between the 35mm macro lens and the 150mm macro lens.