Garden Buddliea Gallery

        Living in Marston Moretaine means that I am close to both lakes and open countryside, and in different weather conditions there is never a shortage of varied subject material for photography. On this occasion I only opened my back door and my Buddliea was hosting different butterfly species about their business of pollinating, whilst savouring its abundant and welcoming pollen.
        The preceding days had been dull and uninviting for them, but on this day, the wind had subsided, the sun shone, and I was feeling the need to be outside as duller weather was forecast, so it was not a difficult decision to forego exercising my car, and to simply take advantage of the visiting butterflies and exercise my small LUMIX, without any need of even a monopod for support. This camera does have its quirks, and I do need to keep using it frequently to establish the best way to master it, as my memory, or rather, lack of it, necessitates that I keep up my familiarity with its controls, as they are not as easy to master as my Canon bodies and lenses.
        It is interesting to note that fellow photographer, Adam, had arrived at a similar conclusion as myself but two years or so earlier than me, and in his case, the choice was Sony equipment. In my case I was at the NEC for a photographic show, and I was meeting up with a fellow photographer with whom I had once worked alongside, who had brought a friend with him who suggested I visit the LUMIX stand as he felt the FZ10002 might well be worth taking a good look at, as he had recently bought one, and was highly impressed. Playing with it on the exhibition stand, and looking at the impressive results, on an impulse, together with this endorsement from a user, I decided to buy one, there and then, along with a spare battery and charger as it seemed like a reasonable risk. I have to say it has lived up to, and exceeded expectations, and although it is still not as easy for me to exercise total control over it compared to my Canon bodies, it is no toy! The pictures in this gallery I could not have managed with my long zoom on the Canon camera without recourse to a tripod, and even then I could not have moved around to capture the shots I managed with the LUMIX! Thank you Panasonic.

In the Back Garden…

            I had initially intended a trip to the River Great Ouse, but because I needed several food items and it meant some needed to be brought back to my freezer and fridge, I decided to forego a further car journey. I am very fortunate to have a Buddleia in the back Garden and Butterflies consider the florettes irresistible, and their recent arrival meant I could simply walk into the back garden and enjoy photographing them. 
            I therefore initially put the 60-600mm Sigma lens on the EOS R6 body as this gave me some distance, to avoid my being a threat, but to ensure some stability, and manage the weight, I mounted the camera and lens on a monopod. I later used two other lenses purely hand held, the 24-70mm and the 100mm Macro Canon lenses.
            All three lenses are in frequent use, and invariably accompany me for trips to local woods and lakes. Sadly of late, another of my favourites, the 12-24mm Sigma wide-angle zoom has seen less use as it is my favourite for recording architectural and city scenes, and I have not been frequenting towns and cities of late. However as Lockdown eases and the threat lessens, I may well visit London and give it an airing.
            This proved to be a pleasant way to relax in warm sunshine and unlike my trip to Brogborough, the processing of the images was completed the same day as the shooting, so there was no pressure involved in getting the gallery up on the blog.

Sigma 2x Converter Test using the EOS R Body

Sigma kindly lent me their 2x Converter, fundamentally for me to see how it performed with their excellent 60-600mm Sports lens. By way of background, I had purchased the 1.5x Converter straight off as I knew of it’s capabilities from my using it on earlier Sigma lenses, but till now the loss of exposure has put me off because  of the frequency of operating in less than ideal lighting conditions.

My experience of using the EOS R in similar conditions has shown me that the full-frame EOS R has a higher pixel count than my 5D MkIII so Noise is far less, and I knew that that earlier body, when I was favoured with enough light, the combination performed well with the addition of the 1.4x Converter. So, if my surmise was correct it would be worth buying the more powerful converter, but the risk was too great, hence why I asked Sigma for the opportunity to check it out. Generously, they were happy to oblige.

From my initial testing with one averagely light day at nearby Brogborough and the 60-600mm Sports lens capturing shots of a Windsurfer on a hydrofoil, it looked promising, but so far conditions have not given me the chance of further evaluation, so I dug out my 70-200m f/2.8 lens and using the 2x Converter, I took some shots in the garden of butterflies, and from that learned I needed f/8 rather than f/5.6, but that would have pushed the ISO too high, but at least it showed promise that given better lighting it would be fine (proof if I needed it can be seen by looking at the bee shots in the gallery, where my chosen shutter speed was inadequate when they were in flight, and improving the ISO would simply have not offered any benefit, since though they might be sharper, the extra noise would wipe that out!

Overall thus far, my impression is that the EOS R has improved sufficiently that it looks as if my Bank Balance is due to take a hit, but hopefully with just a bit more sunshine, I will be swayed and will add this to my armoury of accessories that will allow me to wait before plunging for a wide aperture long prime lens. With any luck, if wind and sun combine in the next week, Sigma and I may well be in happy conjunction as Seller and Buyer respectively!

Unexpected Gallery of Garden Interest

 had a need to show the effect of a narrow Depth of Field to illustrate how to throw an image of a flower away from its background and suppress detail beyond with a pleasant soft blurring, popularised by the term ‘Bokeh’.

According to the Law of Unexpected Consequences, which I might have  expected given the season and the warm weather after some rain, I became distracted by the hum of bumble bees pollinating some of the flowers, and the very typical flight pattern of the humble hoverfly – a particular favourite of mine. Instead of two minutes outside  before returning to process the aforementioned couple of shots, I spent my lunch half hour following the hoverflies and a couple of large green flies, possibly green bottle flies, two of these spent a short while just looking at each other, before flying off.

 The Buddliea is just coming out which should mean a splash of colour from visiting butterflies, but for now, I just spotted three; a Cabbage White, Comma and Red Admiral. None stayed long, obviously there are more developed Buddliea elsewhere! Last week whilst I was mowing the lawn which was covered in clover flowers, the bees were making the most of it before I finished clearing it to reveal the grass, and it was interesting to note the density of bees increasing as their food source was diminishing, and I was careful not to injure them, which meant I was forever stopping and starting to give them the best chance to survive.

I hope that last night’s rain and today’s warm sun puts some green back into the khaki  lawn that has been prevalent for the last month or so. I cannot complain about the opportunity to get another gallery of images to the blog, so the time taken was not wasted.

Burnham Bramble Burning and Butterfly

I drove down to Burnham to offer help to my nephew, Alex with his somewhat overgrown garden, so as I broke for lunch, I went to the car and took out my EOS7D Mk II camera and the 100mm macro to grab a few shots whilst the lighting was good.

I had spent the morning hacking back brambles that seemed as if they had been fed steroids for the past several years, until the break when I was able to reveal two tree stumps and two remnants of a privet hedge, one fairly healthy, the second less so; but at least now they stood a chance of survival, unimpeded by the thorny clutches of the brambles.

The abundance of roses, a buddleia and numerous other flowers demonstrated that the garden had once been well-stocked, so these hopefully will be returned to their former glory. The Peacock butterfly certainly felt the buddliea warranted its attention.

It is a shame that both he and his sister Virginia are now so more distant than hitherto, as it would be good to have spent more time there to help in the task of restoration, but I think I made the most of the short time I was there, helping him and his colleague from his nautical days, Amrit.

In his enthusiasm to burn the spoil I would have been grateful to be asked to move the car beforehand as it is now covered in white ash, and when I opened the boot, much that had been on the bootlid  was sucked into the boot space! I'll forgive him this time as he did provide me with a lunch and cups of tea. And, I now have a few more images that will serve as greetings cards at some future occasion – perhaps in the design of a Wedding gift label when he and Palka tie the knot.

Somewhat Forlorn Butterflies

The two mature Buddliea bushes in my back garden have been very slow to blossom this year, which has been a major disappointment to me. The florettes have only just begun to really show within the last three or four days, and I was beginning to worry that they would flower so late that no insects would still be around to do their work.

Sunday afternoon finally saw a reasonable number of both the butterflies and bees, I had only seen Cabbage Whites in the garden so far this season. Now I was seeing the more colourful varieties, the Tortoiseshell, Small Brown and Peacock, but upon closer inspection those visitors were in a parlous state, so having had a warm fuzzy over seeing the increased numbers of butterflies gracing my garden, I was now much saddened by seeing the tatty and battered ones that arrived. I doubt these specimens have long to wait before the end comes.

The bees seemed in better condition, but even before Sunday I was seeing battered wingtips on those. The gallery of images I have created shows that they were all hard at work catching up on lost time as they gathered the fresh nectar, and the bees seemed happy to bulldozer past the butterflies as if they were not there. The butterflies seemed far more concerned when their own species arrived on the scene, and would often fly away rather than stay their ground.

The various species of Whites were still keen on mating as they would often fly off and do their aerial pirouettes when confronted on a buddliea blossom. This now the last of any flowering in this garden, so once these visitors have left I really only have Autumn to bring colour to the garden till Spring next year.