I met up with Lizzy and Tim for a walk in the woods. Wendover Woods is a vast tract of Forestry Commission Land that is beautifully organised and maintained. The road is in good condition and it is a fair drive to reach the centre, wending its way through the trees with occasional laybys and some automatic ticket dispensers before you arrive at the car parks, Café and toilets. When we arrived, there were plenty of parking spaces still available.
The café staff are young, numerous, cheerful and helpful, and we dropped in for some drinks before setting off. We strolled in dappled sunlight past the car parks and through a grassy area with several groups setting up gazebos, tents and barbecues, with families playing football and all thoroughly enjoying the warm weather and open spaces.
Soon we took a left through the trees and entered a long winding gravel path with wild flowers, weeds and bushes either side, and it was soon time to take out the camera to record the abundant insect life. The dragonflies like miniature helicopters flew around us at one stage, but never settled in our sight and travelled at incredible speed. I was not lucky enough until much later, to get a shot of one, and even then it was at a distance and incredibly well camouflaged.
There were several different species of butterfly, and some specimens were showing distinct signs of wear on their wings, presumably from the high winds and rain we have experienced of late. There were not too many aphids, but ladybirds abounded as did hoverflies and what seemed like a battle-tank style fly, full of barbs and armour. I am presuming from a slight similarity to the smaller hoverflies that several I shot were female – their eyes were separated in the middle. In one part, there were several crickets and grasshoppers, all congregating on some dry dead leaves.
On our return, the numbers of people had increased substantially. We stopped at the café for a meal of toasted panini, and drinks, before having a last twenty minutes walk in a different area where we larked about testing our balancing skills. Since Lizzy and Tim were planning to watch the Liverpool-Arsenal match on Sky at a pub, we parted and I spent a pleasant last hour at College Lake, where I got shots of a fly becoming supper for a damselfly.
Welcome
I am Rod Wynne-Powell, and this is my way to pass on snippets either of a technical nature, or related to what I am currently doing or hope to be doing in the near future.
A third-person description follows:
Professional photographer, Lightroom and Photoshop Workflow trainer, Consultant, digital image retoucher, author, and tech-editor for Martin Evening's many 'Photoshop for Photographers' books.
For over twenty years, Rod has had a client list of large and small companies, which reads like the ‘who’s who’ of the imaging, advertising and software industries. He has a background in Commercial/Industrial Photography, was Sales Manager for a leading London-based colour laboratory and has trained many digital photographers on a one-to-one basis, in the UK and Europe.
Still a pre-release tester for Adobe in the US, for Photoshop, he is also very much involved in the taking of a wide range of photographs, as can be seen in the galleries.
See his broad range of training and creative services, available NOW. Take advantage of them and ensure an unfair advantage over your competitors…
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Monday 16 August 2010
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