My daughter stops by the Tardis to enquire whether the Doctor needs a new companion.
Is the doctor in?
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Author Archives: Rachael
Intrepid explorer
After hacking through the forbidding jungle, the intrepid explorer finally came upon the mighty river.
“…les jeux d’enfants ne sont pas jeux: et les faut juger en eux, comme leurs plus serieuses actions.”
Children at play are not merely playing; their games should be seen as their most serious actions.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
Yeehaa!
Weevils enjoying a little recreational rodeo.
“Do you come here often?”
“Only in the mating season.”
Spike Milligan, The Goon Show
Monument Valley moonrise
Our visit to Monument Valley in April 2009 happily coincided with a full moon.
Reigate
We spent yesterday in Reigate, a quiet market town in North Surrey. The only camera I had with me was my iPhone so, in the true tradition (if there has been enough time for there to be a tradition) of iPhoneography, I have lightly edited the images on my iPad and uploaded directly from there.
Reigate has the remains of a castle so I get to continue my series on castles. The castle was built in the eleventh century and fell into decay in the seventeenth. None of the stonework remains but the earthworks have been turned into a pretty, and peaceful garden.
Underneath the castle gardens is a network of caves. The most well-known, The Barons’ Cave, is reputed to have been a meeting place for the barons who devised the Magna Carta. The stone pyramid in the top photographs guards an underground
sallyport.
The few remains of the castle were removed in 1777 when the land was converted into a garden. The mock medieval gateway was built at that time.
We thoroughly enjoyed our day in Reigate. The town has a lot of interesting independent shops, a fine array of eateries and an Everyman cinema (in which we saw Prometheus). Best of all, the sun shone: a rare event here this summer!
Shooting the City
On the whole, I find photography a solitary activity, and I am happy with that. I very rarely go out shooting in a group. When I do, I usually end up deleting the images I take; I just can’t seem to relax into it.
But a couple of years ago I did enjoy a stroll around the City of London with fellow members of a Flickr group, T189 Oct-Dec 2008. All members of this group, which I administer, took the Open University’s short digital photography course in Oct-Dec 2008.
Although activity in the group has gradually waned over the years, there is still a core of supportive and keen digital shooters and it was a pleasure to meet some of them in person on our City photo walk.
And I didn’t delete every image.
Trapped
An aphid caught in a web awaits its doom.
Dar’st thou die?
The sense of death is most in apprehension;
And the poor beetle that we tread upon
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.
William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, III.i
More cricket antics
If only all spiders were so pretty
You may have noticed that my blog tends to feature minibeasts. But rarely will you find a spider, because I am quite simply scared stiff of them. I know, pathetic. But perhaps I wouldn’t mind them so much if they all looked like this one. This is a common crab spider, misumena vatia. They hang out on flowers in gardens in southern England. They are clever, because I have noticed that they favour the more scented blooms, maximising the chance of some hapless insect happening by. They come in white or yellow, which I much prefer to brown or black. But they still have too many legs.
One square metre
One question I am often asked is how I manage to spot all the bugs I shoot. It really is just a matter of training your eye. The more you start to look for the smaller creatures around you, the more you start to find them.
One way to train your eye is to find a small area of vegetation, say one square metre, and see how many insects you can find and photograph. You will be surprised after a little while just how many are there.
All of the shots in today’s post were taken in one clump of weeds by the Wey Navigation towpath. The photo shoot took about 15 minutes in total. In fact, I found several other insects in the same clump.
Why not give it a try and share the results on your blog and/or in comments here?
My Internet is down and I am blogging on 3G, which is expensive, so please forgive me if I am a little slow in replying or visiting your blogs until the pesky thing is fixed.
Focused Moments 