Another Garden, Marston Moretaine

               Marston Moretaine is a village that has been expanding with ever more houses being built on land that was scarred with the need for clay for bricks, and this once excavated and exhausted, in turn provided lakes that provided opportunities for recreation, such as sailing and fishing. More recently, it gained nationwide news coverage from local hero Captain Tom Moore, who walked his garden to raise millions for the National Health Service. The Wartime slogan: “Keep Calm and Carry On” has become the resilient answer to the current epidemic situation brought about by the Corona Virus, and has meant much time spent in gardens, and I have taken the opportunity to walk around capturing the efforts of several house owners lavishing much effort on their gardens, which in turn raise the spirits of those who pass by whilst walking either to the shops and Post Office in one direction or the Forest Centre and allotments in the other.

               Currently, the pipe-laying at the junction at the top of the road, which has inflicted long waits for drivers, whilst willing for traffic lights to allow their flow to resume, has meant many more eyes have had the opportunity to gaze on the blooms that brighten the front gardens of many of the houses. On two recent occasions as I took just such an opportunity to bring my camera to bear upon the front gardens from the path, the owners have generously allowed me closer access by inviting me to cross their relative frontiers.

               This gallery is a record of the most recent acceptance of such an invitation, and I hope that my pictures allow others to share in my enjoyment of the photographs I was fortunate enough to take.

Marston Lake Afternoon Visit— Mainly Dragonflies

This trip was made for yet more checking into how to get more out of using the mirrorless bodied EOS R with a long lens and fast-moving insects, in this instance Dragonflies and Damselfies. I have yet to use Sigma’s USB Dock to set up targeted focus zones to facilitate minimising focus travel into some presets — to do that I need to know precisely the distances that would prove beneficial, so I need to decide that from more usage. Another aspect is how to set up the focus point within the frame; it is all too easy to knock it off to an edge. Typically, if I set it using the playback screen and placing it with a finger, my nose can accidentally disturb that setting!

Also, since my time was limited, I opted for using a monopod, rather than a tripod, to give me the facility to move quickly as the sun moved around, and that at least did work acceptably, though it was tiring with such a weighty lens as the 60-600mm as well as the 1.4x Converter. Incidentally, using this is really a boon due to the extra range of this lens, especially when the subjects are small — it would be very limiting had I tried leaving the extender permanently on the 150-600mm I used to have. That 60mm end makes using the extender far more valuable.

I put the Acrotech Long Lens Tripod Head atop my Manfrotto Monopod to give me as stable a platform as I could to use the monopod, and that was a really good move as it made it fairly easy to adjust the balance of such a long lens on such a light support. Also using the higher ISOs with this mirrorless full-frame body meant that the freedom I chose was not disadvantaged by excessive Noise. To hammer that point home — the tightly cropped (2451 x 1634px) image _N3A3042 was shot at 10,000° ISO with an exposure of 1/1000sec at f/10 with +1.3 EV compensation — that just blew me away! So far, I do consider myself a total novice in relation to mirrorless camera bodies, but this is proof that I should persevere.

Two of my esteemed colleagues moved to mirrorless way before me, and I have some catching up to do, and I admit is hard to lose shots in the interim that I knew I would have got using either of my DSLRs, I will persevere because shots of this quality simply were not possible using those bodies. So ‘onwards and upwards’!

10,000° ISO, yet with manageable noise levels seems unreal! (Oh, by the way, that shot is of a pair of Water Boatmen).

I did learn another useful and not totally unrelated snippet following these fast  and adept masters of powered flight, ‘Don’t try to follow them at the longest focal length, give myself a chance by coming down, so I have more to learn in the new world of mirrorless! I also tried chancing my arm at manually presetting a distance, but since I practised that at the end of my short stint, and the sunlight had gone behind clouds, so that had little chance of success, but I will not be defeated! And the time was therapeutic — I had had frustration with the computer, and needed to get away!

Bank Holiday Monday – Brogborough Lake Bright, and Busy

           I decided that I’d like a relaxing day just seeing what I could capture around the lake at Brogborough. I knew that without even the slightest zephyr, there would certainly not be any windsurfing activity on this bright and ultimately hot Bank Holiday Monday. I reckoned there might well be those who would take to the water on Paddle Boards, and on this I was correct; I was surprised how many would be taking to the water, and certainly I did meet a couple of people whom I would normally associate with windsurfing, but in the main the visitors today were young families.

          I decided that I would take a panorama, but as My bracket which would have allowed me to use a tripod, was carefully stowed back at the house, so I would have to take the shots hand-held as to get any height to the final image the camera has be in a vertical format. So this was my first set of images, and only when I was at the computer would I know how successful the composite image might be – it was certainly not perfect, but definitely it was usable. It was was assembled from twenty single images in RAW format in Lightroom. Later I might well put it into Zoomify, so it can be seen greater detail, but for now that is not the case.

          I had used the 5D MkIII with the 24-70mm lens for those shots, but swapped to the 100mm Macro thereafter to photograph anything I felt was interesting; in the main I was looking for insects, and found an unusual bee-like one that I had only rarely spotted before it tapers from an oval body to what would appear to be a fixed proboscis, and unlike normal bees it is able to hover, and it seemed to favour a clump of white flowers, but it was often very nippy, so I would lose it frequently.

          There were a few hoverflies, flies, ladybirds, and one such looked as if it were heading for a feast of Aphids, but then headed off in another direction, but in the background a hoverfly was considering an ambush! There were a couple of swans, so not a vast array of exciting images, but a challenge to capture, with a lot of watching and waiting! Altogether a very relaxing way to spend time with a camera in the great outdoors.

Parked at Warden Street to Photograph Aerobatics

I had heard there was a possibility of the Red Arrows paying Old Warden’s Edwardian Pageant a Flying Visit, so I picked a spot at the end of a long cul-de-sac at Warden Street in the hope that I might just be fortunate, but I was unlucky on that count, though I still got shots of biplane aerobatics, large flocks of birds, mainly taking advantage of farmers ploughing their fields. The road I was in was very narrow and where I was parked was local residents turning circle I soon learned, although everyone was very friendly.

I met a charming couple who lived in the last cottage before the gate to a large farm, who were the first to use this spot to turn their car round, and I learned he was a Nikon Man, who forgave me for my own choice of Canon equipment! The lady asked whether I knew when the Red Arrows might arrive, but I was unable to help, I learned from the man that he would be looking out for them whilst mowing the lawn, but a short while later it was his wife whom I spotted with a mower, so I joshed with her that he had meant he would watching his wife mow! A few moments later he came out with another mower, so I asked whether he had been rumbled and had felt guilty so followed suit! It turned out he was mowing the tougher stuff, whilst his wife mowed the more level areas.

Since there was not much human flying machine activity, I brought out my macro and photographed some of the wild flowers, I also spotted a seed being snagged by a spider’s web, and the owner felt his luck was in and retraced his footsteps shortly after when he found it was a false alarm – possibly a bit miffed by being disturbed unnecessarily!

Whilst waiting for a possible arrival of any aircraft, I took opportunities to photograph some of the wildflowers nearby and one horserider returned to her parked car that was present upon my arrival, and visited the stabling beyond the gate I was parked across. When she was ready to leave, I helped and was duly thanked, for guiding her reversing by my car. A little later still another lady rider arrived, entered the stabling and came out leading her young male, brown spotted cream horse, and I opened the heavy gate for her, and grabbed a few shots of him. I later found her on a phone leading him back and hearing comments saying she was “OK…” suggesting she might well have taken a fall, I enquired, and learned the horse had been bitten by a horsefly and ended up kicking her in the stomach and grazing her arm; she was definitely still in considerable pain, so I opened the gate entirely on my own to save her from more strain. She said it was not the horse’s fault, and certainly from the brief shots I took of their return, his equine body language suggested he was concerned.

I did get a few shots of some biplane aerobatics, and a Lysander, a plane type I believe my father flew over to Holland from RAF Tempsford in WWII, though the gallery is more about flora and fauna and an afternoon in the English countryside – fairly relaxing.

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.

Stockwood Saturday – Warm and Windy

I had managed to clear everything in preparation for the family trip to Goodwood for the Festival of Speed meeting, so having used the Wednesday afternoon to cover Luton Hoo’s Walled Garden, I decided I would pay the Stockwood Discovery Centre a visit, as I was sure the flowers and insect life would not disappoint.

I was right, there was an incredible panoply of colour on display, and the Centre was crowded with young families enjoying the afternoon sun. I had found some interesting and unusual flowers with beautifully textured leaves in the bed at the entrance, so I took out the camera even before going in! I headed for the lavender once within the walled enclave, which I was certain would be attractive to the bees, I was not expecting to see just how hard it was for them to do their pollinating! The sensible ones didi not fly off when the breezes blew, they simply clambered from one flowerhead to any that were nearby, which at least meant there was more time they spent static than had there been less wind.

Once again the long greenhouse was locked, and on this visit I was too late for anyone to let me in there, and anyway there was plenty for me to shoot in the limited time I had left before they closed for the day. I only saw one hoverfly on this visit which I found surprising bearing in mind the moisture from recent rains.

Even though several days have passed since I took these shots, I have already used some of the images in a birthday card for my sister-in-law, and I have yet to load all the Goodwood shots from the following day, but the delay was all worthwhile as I was busy doing a ‘real’ job for a designer pitching for a Royal Mail project involving a hand colouring from an original black and white image; now completed and happily approved.