Where have they all gone?

The title refers to the insects... the cold snap earlier in the year seems to have hit our native invertebrates really hard - dragonfly and butterfly numbers have been poor when compared to 2015 as have bees, wasps, hoverflies etc (at least round my neck of the woods). As a consequence, the orchard next to our garden is very low in fruit - especially when compared to last years bumper harvest...we shall see what the second half of the summer brings...

Photographically the month of July has been challenging - cold winds, rain and general dullness seemed to dominate the weather and regular shoots just didn't happen - sporadic trips were more the order of the day...

First trip of the month was a commission shoot to Old Hunstanton in Norfolk to get some images of beach huts - whilst there I couldn't resist the plants on offer amongst the dunes...

Common restharrow

Sea bindweed

Sea holly

As an interesting addition to this, whilst walking through my village I chanced upon a relative of the sea holly...

One of the garden Eryngium types - although commonly found in gardens and florists, they are not commonly naturalised...

A further commission this month was to cover a school play - a quite brilliant production of A Midsummer Night's Dream... Really enjoyable to shoot and the client was more than happy with the result... Her response on seeing them...

" I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THEM. WHAT A GIFT….

Thank you so, so, so, so much. I can’t wait to show them to the cast. You have exquisitely enhanced the energy, the soulfulness, the focus and the expressiveness of these kids. Such beautiful close-ups. I particularly love the black and white ones – the ones of Oberon and that one of Hippolyta crying look like something from a classic film noir…I hope we will be able to print and enlarge a couple to go in the main building of Chesterton as a representation of culture at the College.

 “The still point of a turning world” – T.S Eliot – this phrase comes to my mind when I look at artistic photography like yours."

Not the usual natural history but I enjoy this kind of thing as well...

So... whilst waiting for dull days to turn to sun I have had time on my hands to experiment - something usually left for winter days... After working on an image of poppies on my drive, the result was...

This I was happy with, so with more time on my hands I started looking for other images to edit in a similar way...

Even an image from a Dubai souk didn't escape the treatment... I am really pleased with this effect...look out for more to come. For those of you who are interested the image is initially edited in Photoshop CC using the coloured pencil filter. Then moved to Colour Efex Pro 4 to adjust contrast and give the image more punch. Finally that image is edited in Lightroom CC for the last remaining tweaks. Each image takes about 45 minutes to an hour to complete... I think it is worth it... what do you guys think?


Now a visit from Quinn's God-mother gave us an excuse for a lovely day out at Wimpole Hall... these days out always provide photo opportunities so I captured a few landscapes as created by Lancelot "Capability" Browne...quintessentially English in their appearance...

As always the garden has been useful in providing images... always useful to be able to fall back on that when the weather only plays ball fleetingly...

Even brambles look good sometimes...

One of my resident common newts taking a breath...

Dwarf mallow...looks like it is made of silk...

Lesser stag beetle makes an appearance by the pond...

Meadow brown butterfly

Above is a mating pair of red-eyed damselflies... a day later small red-eyed damselfly also appeared (see below)... this brings the total of dragonfly/damselfly species recorded on my pond to 10 with 3 confirmed breeding...

Speckled bush-cricket...

And that about wraps it up for July... hope you like the pix - let me know your favourite...

TTFN