Crop Format - Portrait or Landscape?

With a lovely sunny warm Sunday, I grabbed a  few quick images from the garden yesterday.  This Common Blue was quite obliging for me - unlike the Red Admiral and Gatekeepers that I was hoping to get some decent images of.

This image came out reasonably well in the breezy conditions, resting on dead Knapweed.

I thought I would crop in the two formats from the same image and get your take on it.

Which do you prefer?  and why?

The landscape falls most comfortably on the eye to me, but as Dave has said many times before it is always worth getting your subject in both formats.

For the purposes of this image, the original was taken in landscape, and I have cropped accordingly.

Martin

Badger Culling - Part 2

Following on from Dave's blog on this subject last month, I heard about an alternate option today that is being pursued in Gloucestershire, the neighbouring county to me so thought I would share it with you.

Back in June, the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust announced it would commence vaccination trials on Badgers in this story here.    Today, I picked up via Twitter that fourteen animals have been vaccinated at one location alone - good news for those creatures, even though the cull that has been much discussed is probably a long way off yet.  Reading on further, more details can be found here as well.

I am encouraged by this and hope that this might prove to be the solution.

If you want to support Badger protection in any way, the Badger Trust website is here.

Finally, one more quick plug for the Big Butterfly Count - don't forget to join in and send in your records.

Mine for my garden is as follows;

6 Large White

1 Red Admiral

2 Comma

7 Gatekeeper

2 Meadow Brown

I Common Blue

2 Peacock

Quite happy with that for a small patch - shows the wildlife planting has worked anyway.

Martin

Big Butterfly Count coming soon

Regular readers will know that I enjoy seeing and photographing the butterflies that come through my garden and around my local patch.  with the much warmer weather at least, butterflies are coming out in quite big numbers now.

The Butterfly Conservation  are interested to hear from you about your sightings, and in the same way that the RSPB do their Big Garden Bird Count each year so it is with butterflies also.  Unlike the BGBC, with butterflies you have a two week window starting this weekend.  Details can be found here so you can either do it in your garden or at other locations.

It would be great if a good number of our readers in the UK could also do this and if so, we would like to hear of your results.

I will be doing mine through the garden so will let you know in due course.

Great book for butterfly ID can be found below and should be a must have in all wildlife enthusiats reference library.

Martin

The Butterflies are back

It is wonderful what a difference a couple of warm sunny days back.  Followers of my twitter feed @martind01 will know that I saw my first butterflies in my garden of the year on Saturday.

Well on Saturday we had two Brimstones, three Commas and a single Peacock.  Yesterday, we went a bit better and had four Brimstones, three Commas again, two Peacock and a single Small Tortoiseshell.  So four species by March 20th - a good start to the year.

I will send my recordings into the Warwickshire Butterfly Conservation team site.  Why not check out your Counties site by checking out the national site here and sending in your recordings.

I currently have a glut of photos to share with you from a number of outings so will bring this to you in forthcoming blogs.

Martin

The Butterflies are still around

Last weekend saw Comma, Large White, Small White, Peacock, Meadow Brown and Common Blue still coming into the garden.  It will be interesting to see when the last records of each of these will be this year.

I got a few of the Common Blue to share with you, and use these examples to show a technique that I use a lot, and that I have mentioned before.

Get your first shot in while you are not anything like as close as you want to be.

Then get a bit closer and get a couple more, then do the same and then the same again.

You never know when you are going to scare your subject so a gradual approach means you slowly get an improving shot.

What this also shows in the wider shot is the habitat - in this case Birds Foot Trefoil, with both flower and seed heads.  Now the first is very messy, but the approach I have used shows that you can work your background, and of course the closer you get, the better the depth of fields effects become, throwing more of the clutter out of focus for a more pleasing perspective.

Both taken with the 5D and Canon 180 f3.5L macro.......as usual

Martin

Big Butterfly Count

So did you do yours this week?

I did and got the following.

Five Large White
Three Small White
One Green Veined White
Four Peacock
Two Small tortoiseshell
Two Holly Blue
One Speckled Wood


I only took one image during the count of the Speckled Wood which had settled on some of the drying hay/wildflower cuttings in the garden.

I also got some better results with the moth trap last night so will be back with some images from that later in the week

Martin

Butterfly Week and a bit of catch up

In my last post I mentioned it was Big Butterfly Count Week.  Well by way of linking to that post and also catching up with some of the images I took back in June, I thought I would share these with you for a little inspiration for you to get out there and join in the count.....well maybe.

Meadow Brown

Male Common Blue

Marbled White

Copulating 5 spot Burnet moths with exuvia

Copulating 5 Spot Burnet Moths on Common Spotted orchid

All with 5D and Canon 180 macro, handheld or supported on bean bag on the late evening sunlight at a location about three miles from my home in Warwickshire

Martin

Butterflies and Parks

'Weeks', like buses seem to come along in threes - guess it might have something to do with the kids breaking up from school for the summer.

There are three 'weeks' that you can take part in here in the UK.

First up it is Big Butterfly Count week.  With numbers seemingly down this week, I would encourage as many of you to take part.  It will involve just 15 minutes of your time watching and counting, and then a few minutes to submit the results.

 

If you do, please let us know what you saw - we would love to hear from you.

The second 'week' is 'National Parks' week, celebrating the open and natural spaces of our land.  Again lots to do and see.  Check out the website to see what is on offer.  Maybe something to do if you have kids on holidays.

Finally there is 'Parks Week' - this covers your local parks.   This 'week' also has a photo competition that involves wildlife - so again maybe one that might be of interest to you.

That ends this weeks public service announcements  :-)

Martin

Local Patch - Common Blue Butterflies

In my post yesterday, I mentioned that it was early June when the Common Blue had just taken to the wing.  Well I was only a month out - those images were taking a month after they had really taken to the wing, and were in full mating mode.  Today's pictures were the ones I got when they had first emerged and were taken before we went to North Uist at the beginning of May.

These images were of a number of different individuals, but wanted to share a photographic study of different compositions, plants and angles.

These were among the first images I took on the new 'old' 5D and with the fabulous Canon 180f3.5L macro lens.  Let us know which if the styles shown here you like best and why?

Martin

Pond Life Part 5 - The Hunter and the Hunted

There has been huge amounts of activity around the pond this week, and I will bring more details of that in the future.  But todays blog is about a little story that I watched unfold in front of me yesterday.

It had been another day of landscaping in the garden in intense heat, so any excuse to stop and take photos was welcomed.  I noticed a White butterfly resting on a small bit of sodden log that I have in the pond.  So grabbing the 7D and 180 macro, I tried to get some images.  I could see that it was busy using it's proboscis to probe into the wood to drink or take some other form of food.

Green Veined White (second brood)

I also could see a little bit of movement out of the corner of my eye just across the pond

The Frog slowly worked it's way closer and closer before the White could see the threat and cleared off. So with that I got back to my digging.

Martin

Rare Garden Visitor

As it write this blogpost this afternoon it is extremely hot, although not at the temperatures that Dave has been experiencing.  I guess loads of you will be wasting watching England lose which is why I am at the computer.

On to more productive use of my time, I was working in the garden this morning, enjoying watching the recently emerged five and six spot burnet moths (future post) flying around.  I had an extremely productive overnight moth trap session (another future post) as well.  Jac suddenley gave me a call while I was whacking a post with a sledge hammer about an interesting butterfly she had seen.  Grabbing the camera, we found it settled down on some knapweed, unsure of it's identity and grabbed a couple of images.

Checking out my butterfly book (see link below), I found it was a Plain Tiger Danaus chrysiipus and checked out its range and distribution.  It seems it is a native of the Canary islands, Africa, coastal Meditteranean, central East Turkey, Saudi Arabia, tropical Asia and Australia.  So was it a very well travelled subject that was enjoying the hot weather.

Probably not, I reckon it had flown less than a mile from the Stratford Butterfly Farm after somebody left the door open.


 
Right it is half time so I am off to polish the lawn or something

Martin

A quick one from the Garden

A few weeks ago, I posted this blog with a female Orange Tip on Bluebells in the garden.

Well we have had  a few Orange Tips through this year although the males have been less inclined to set down.

While I didn't get much time with my cameras over the weekend, I did manage to get this little lady who set down on an emerging Red Campion flower.

Again it was quite windy, and I had to use the technique I first described last year with using AI servo for macro work.  This was a bit more of a challenge that the shot last year as I used the 5D and 180 macro - a not very fast focussing camera, and a slow focussing lens too.  But it came up pretty reasonably so cannot complain.

Martin

Worth checking your garden in the evenings

On Sunday night as dusk was approaching, I took a look around the garden and found a female Orange Tip butterfly settled on one of the bluebells.  I went back in doors to get the camera and got these two images.

Both with the 7D , on board fill flash to help freeze any movement due to the breeze.

I have some minor colour variations here with the colour temp.  Bluebells are very sensitive to minor changes in colour temperature in processing, and show you when you are not consistent and particularly when you share back to back images like this.

Framed slightly differently between shots so you can see more of the flower in the second shot.

Sadly these are not native English bluebells but the Spanish variant.  I will leave them in the garden this year, but they will come out  as I have planted native English seeds that I expect will come up next year.

I didn't expect the Orange tip to go anywhere overnight so I went out first thng yesterday morning , with the hope of a heavy dew to add to the atmosphere.  Sadly, there was only a very mild dew that can just about be seen.

Again a slightly different crop.  I don't normally favour square crops but am reasonably happy with this.  I set the camera up with the tripod and the remote release this time, as I knew that the butterfly wasn't going to go anywhere in a hurry, so was able to use live view, manual focus and the 5x viewing facility to ensure critical focus.  In conjunction with the DOF preview button and the multi toggle, I was able to ensure that all the critical parts of the butterfly were sharp.  This one also used a the fill flash to put some additional light into the shadows.

The final shot was with the 1Dmk111 (no fill flash this time), as the batts on the 7D expired.  A more traditional crop here, but in so doing, I  lose the bottom flower of the bluebell.

If only the butterfly and bluebell had better proportions relative to each other for photographic balance  :-)

Anyway the point of this blog, other than to share a few pretty images with you, and some slightly different approaches to cropping is to check your garden when it is getting towards dusk.  If you have any butterflies settling for the evening, then get up early the next day to capture your photos, and if you are lucky you will get some with dew on them, which really does add to the image photographically.  You will see some on the last two if you click on the image to enlarge, but not much really.

By the way, female Orange Tips don't have a orange tip on their upper wings, unlike the male, in case you were wondering.  I posted the male here last year.

Martin

More from the Cotswolds

We took a trip to Bourton on the Water in the Cotswolds for a day out to celebrate Jac's birthday.  While walking through the pictureseque village I saw a couple of Grey Wagtails.  So a few minutes back to the car, grabbing the 7D, 300f4 with 1.4EFTC, as a nice lightweight walkabout wildlife option, I was in business.

The first three images show the female bird as you can see the yellow is not so pronounced and nor is the bib as dark as the male.  This bird has some red plastic twine caught around her left leg, but it did not seem to concern her.  Lets hope she clears it and it doesn't get snagged on something.

These second two show the male and you can see the differences with more pronounced markings around the head.

In each case, I used the pop up flash to fill in and give a litttle more light as the birds were in heavy shade with very bright light overhead.

On another aside, we had two new butterfly species in the garden today for this year, with our first Holly Blue and male Orange Tip of the Spring, so we are now up to eight species this year.

Flash with Butterflies

One of the things that regular readers will know is that I like to get images in my gardenas and when the opportunities present themselves.  On Sunday, while working the second Speckled Wood butterfly of the year came in and I had the camera ready. 7D with the Canon 180 macro.

The subject was settling in area that was difficult to get a good shot and also straight into the bright sunlight.

 This is the uncropped, just sharpened image - lots of bright highlights and not brilliant light on the subject.

This is the uncropped, just sharpened image but with fill flash - much better lighting control.  I used the pop up flash on the 7D - totally convenient in situations like this.

This final version is how I have processed the second image, with some minor subject cropping, and a little toning down of the highlights on the left hand side to minimise the distractions.  Just a few seconds work in PS as an adjustment layer.

On this occasion, the subject wasn't concerned about me and stayed in position

Martin

A few from the Cotswolds and the garden

I had to take an early trip up to the sawmill yesterday to sort out some more timber for the ongoing garden project.  As I knew I would be going near one or two places where there would or could be some wildlife, I put the 7D/500f4 and the 1.4 TC plus bean bag in the car on the off chance.  Well what a fabulous morning it was.  Silence in the countryside thanks to the Icelandic volcano stopping all UK air traffic.  I got out the car at one point to hear six Skylarks, two Yellowhammer, a Corn Bunting and a Raven all calling at the same time.  What a great pleasure.

I went to a site where I have seen Dipper and Grey Wagtail, but no signs of Dipper at all, buut I did get the Grey Wagtail in bright early morning sunlight.

Further up the lane I managed to get an image of a female Yellowhammer, and a male Chaffinch.

I went along a lane where I had seen Corn Bunting before.  Sadly, I didn't see any but did get a good sighting of a Common Buzzard on a fence rail.

Back home and on with my work, but I was fortunate enough to get three Peacock butterflies in.  This image is quite the best as I wasn't able to get fully square so have lost a little bit of focus on one of the wings.

Another first for the year also was the first Speckled Wood butterfly through the garden, but it did not set down.

Martin

News - Butterflies uses the upper winds to migrate

This was a big story yesterday here in the UK on the early news on Radio 4.

It seems that the insects have a compass sense that enables them to selects the right uppers winds to make journeys of several thousand kilometres to escape the harsher weather in the northern hemisphere.

More details  here for the full story.

Trip Report, Mothing at Monkwood, Worcestershire, Part 3

As promised a couple of posts back, here is the final part of my trip report from last weekend with some butterfly images.

Now I haven't got any decent Comma or Red Admiral shots this year, so was happy to get these. In fact, Red Admirals have been in short supply this in my travels.

The Speckled Wood is probably past it's best now, but it was quite accommodating for me.

Speckled Wood

Red Admiral

Red Admiral

Comma

Comma

That's it from that trip then.

I did say that I would do a review of the old Bird Books a few posts ago but I need to do some more reading to get a decent review to do these fine books justice.

Martin

Beauty and the beasts

Like Martin i have only been shooting around my garden, because we have had such hot weather with temperatures in the high 90's and a couple of days where it hit 100, which is great and one of the reasons we chose North Carolina to live in, The downside is that its hot during the day and still 70-75 at night so most of the wildlife choose the nighttime to come out and rest in the shade during the day, The garden is in bloom and that has bought lots of bugs and butterflies out so i have decide to document these, The light is/can be very harsh so most of my shooting has been with flash to try and even the lighting out, My best find so far has to be a beautiful Black Widow female with egg sacks attached to the side of my house under a hangover, I have noticed that during the hot days she has the egg sacks in the open and in the evening she carefully cuts the web around the sack and moves it tight to the house bricks, i am guessing as well as keeping it safe from rain etc the hot wall will help keep the young warm



I must say that the Sigma 180mm Macro has been great when tripod mounted and working with these deadly spiders, I shot @ F16 in manual mode and on some images used an off camera flash as the spider was partly under an over hang which caused heavy shadows
At the bottom of my garden there are a couple of bushes in bloom that are covered with every type of fly/bee and bugs, Whilst shooting some bees here i noticed what i later found to be an Assassin Bug-never seen or heard of one before and i was abit apprehensive of getting too close as i knew nothing about it, It was very concealed and in the end i had to move a branch and use the camera with one hand to get the shot-so most were OOF and the others were not to brilliant, I soon found out that it could fly as i got closer so the shots ended up just as record shots-see below



This is something i will continue to look out for as i would like to get some decent images of it,
Butterflies are becoming very common especially the beautiful swallowtails so i now have 2 buddlia in my garden and they are there everyday along with assorted skippers



truly beautiful and great to have in such abundance, I shot these handheld with the Nikon 200-400 which suits big butterflies well

I mentioned a long time ago that i had purchased a Hahmel remote release and that i doesn't work at line of site as it was radio frequency, I have been feeding the local deer that coming into my garden with some corn and they come every night,I can even be on the BBQ and they will come and feed, I tried to set a camera up a couple of weeks ago on a beanbag and with camo netting over it near the corn but the deer spooked at the large piece of glass on the 14-24 so i put an empty water bottle there and after a few days they got used to it and now take no notice of it so the other day i again swapped it for a 24-70 on the D3 set at 24mm and had the lens hood on to try and hide the glass abit more,The deer noticed it straight away and i was amazed at how they know what small changes you make even when covered it was all covered in camo netting, The 2 deer circled for a while and got closer and closer before backing off them after an hour one approached and took some food,after a couple of minutes i managed to get a shot which made the deer jump but they come back and i ended up with 8 shots of which only 2 were ok-this one being the best

Exactly what i had envisaged and now i have something to work with, Next time i will try portrait mode, The remote release worked great, I was on the second floor!! looking out of a small window-all for $60

Dave

A quickie today - a few new images from the Garden

Well I am still busy decorating, or rebuilding it feels like on my week off!!

So here are a few images that I took the opportunity to get during tea or lunch breaks. All of these are firsts for me in the garden. There was a delightful Holly Blue butterfly that came in too, but sadly I was not able to get an image. Haven't seen it since either.

Sparrowhawk has made a couple of unsuccessful swoops that I saw - stunning!!, and the Great Spotted Woodpecker is back in grubbing on a dead branch on the apple tree.

Common Darter

Male Gatekeeper

Male Gatekeeper underside on Blackberry

All taken with the Canon 1Dmk3 and Canon 180 f3.5L macro

Martin