The bee is more honoured than other animals, not because she labours but because she labours for others.
Saint John Chrysostom
The bee is more honoured…
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Yearly Archives: 2012
The best tree
These lovely flowers belong to the best thing in my garden, a thirty foot eucryphia tree. It is columnar, with a semi-weeping habit, and evergreen. So already it earns its place as a good garden tree. But, as if that weren’t enough, every July/August, it bursts forth in a froth of large white blooms, with pretty pink anthers, and a sweet scent.
And, best of all, the honey bees love it. In fact, the children call it ‘bee tower’. The garden thrums with the sound of happy bees.
Eucryphia pollen is very fine indeed, little more than dust. The bees look as if they have been sugar frosted as they go about their business.
At times, they are almost frenetic, as if frantic to collect and preserve this bounty while it lasts.
I can claim no gardening credit for this tree – it was here when we moved in ten years ago. I am told they are difficult to establish and fussy in their needs but this one seems to be happy with benign neglect. Long may it last.
Do you have a favourite insect-friendly garden plant/tree?
Into the labyrinth
I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.
Rosalia de Castro
Guess where we are
What an evening!
We travelled light to the Olympics today, hence the poor quality photos. But what an evening it was!
Love those minis – a cool way to carry the discus back to base
Interesting hat
More interesting hats!
Hooray!
A great night to be British
Listen
“As a child, one has that magical capacity to move among the many eras of the earth; to see the land as an animal does; to experience the sky from the perspective of a flower or a bee; to feel the earth quiver and breathe beneath us; to know a hundred different smells of mud and listen unself-consciously to the soughing of the trees.”
Valerie Andrews, A Passion for this Earth
Adding a bokeh background
I was pleased the other day to capture this little hoverfly in mid hover with the light captured in its wings. However, the original shot wasn’t quite as nice.
The background is my patio. It is smooth and doesn’t distract the eye away from the subject but it is not very pretty. A lovely smooth green would have been ideal but the hoverfly ignored my polite request that it hover over the lawn. So I decided to improve the shot with a little photoshop magic.
I have a growing collection of what I call “garden bokeh” images. They are easy to make. Just find a pretty flower bed and some dappled light and, using manual focus, twiddle the focus ring until you get something you like. Then snap. (I like the soft circles that a wide aperture brings – the above is f3.2 – but if you want harder shapes, go for a narrower aperture.) After a bit of experimenting, I decided on this pink, white and green shot for my new background. Then it was an easy matter of copying and pasting the bokeh image onto my original. I usually experiment with various blend modes. Depending on the look you are after, you are likely to end up using soft light, overlay, hard light, multiply or screen. The last two have quite a defined impact: multiply will apply the shadows in the new layer whereas screen will apply the highlights. The other three overlay all tones but with varying intensity. In this case, hard light worked best. If the bokeh had been more contrasty, a softer overlay would probably have been better. Then a small amount of black brushing where the new layer was slightly obscuring the hoverfly and, hey presto!
It’s really no different from using a texture, except the over-layer doesn’t actually have any texture, just soft bubbles of colour.
Is it cheating? Not at all, in my opinion. Both images were taken by me and it is no different from double exposing film or choosing a complementary background in a studio. What do you think?
Bradley does it!
Photo by Maggie Talibart
My daughter’s debut shot, a stunning capture of Bradley Wiggins riding to victory in the Olympic time trials today. Well done, Maggie! I am not sure I should let her near my camera again if she is going to be this good. Well done, Bradley and also Christopher Froome (below) for winning Bronze.
Photo by Maggie Talibart
Summer and the honey bee
I hope you like this image I made this morning of a honey bee on fennel. I only have two fennel plants in my garden but they punch well above their weight when it comes to attracting insects.
Suspended
A beautiful little spider sits in the middle of its web.
The ladies’ turn
The ladies arrive
Yesterday we enjoyed the men’s Olympic road race as it came through our village, Oatlands, near Weybridge in Surrey. Today it was the ladies’ turn.
A rainy day for cycling
What a difference from yesterday’s sunny weather. Intermittent heavy rain and thunder greeted the women. But even the capricious English weather couldn’t spoil the fun for the hardy onlookers and the Police motorcyclists.
Netherlands lead
As it came through Oatlands, the pack was still together. Although the Dutch rider was out in front, it was still anyone’s race.
It’s still anyone’s race
As my other half is Canadian, we cheered two countries on. I hope the Canadian riders saw our huge maple leaf flag!
Determination
The race has just finished. Congratulations to Vos who won gold for the Netherlands but also to our own Lizzie Armitstead for bringing home a silver! Well done to all the hardy cyclists in a very wet race.
Next Olympic fun for us: the time trials on Wednesday!
Focused Moments 