Hot off the presses, two toadstools snapped in my garden this morning.
Toadstools in the lawn
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Category Archives: photography
A foggy day at Painshill
Turkish tent and five arch bridge
As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my favourite local locations is Painshill Park, an eighteenth century landscape garden in Cobham. When I woke up one morning late last month to find a heavy fog, I took my trusty Fuji down to Painshill for a ramble.
Gothic temple and five arch bridge
The mist had coated everything in the finest dew and the spiders’ webs were looking stunning against early Autumn foliage.
Autumn web
Every tuft of grass bore a sparkling hammock of silk.
Hammocks of gossamer and dew
Berries of every hue reminded me that, in the words of the immortal Keats, this was a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Red berries
Elderberries
Not to be outdone, fungi of all kinds were busy decorating the grass,
A toadstool in the park
the forest floor,
Toadstools in the wood
and every tree stump.
Bracken fungus (maybe)
Most of the trees had yet to start turning, but there were a few obliging maples dropping their pastel leaves prettily onto the banks of Painshill Lake, just to give me some foreground interest.
The ruined abbey
In the mist, everything was still. Even sound seemed to be muffled, and it felt as if I had the whole park to myself.
Painshill Lake
The Grotto was closed but I explored the outside.
View through the Grotto window
Nature colonising the Grotto
I often think the Gothic Tower, one of Painshill’s many follies, is a little too pretty to be truly gothic, but in the mist it did look a little bit spooky. A very little bit.
The Gothic Tower
In the woods, I came across these dens, no doubt made by parties of children. Blair Witch, anyone?
‘Mysterious’ dens
They were not far from The Hermitage, one of my favourite follies.
The Hermitage
For a while in the eighteenth century, every self-repecting landscape garden had to have a hermit. Painshill was no exception although story has it that the first man hired for the job lasted only two weeks before he was discovered in a local hostelry drowning his sorrows! He was never replaced.
Inside the Hermitage
Every time I go to Painshill I find something new, whether it be one of nature’s works of art or a fragment of the craft of people.
A fragment of times past
I made a mental note to go back again later this month to see the Park in its full Autumn glory.
The Chinese Bridge
Another of my posts about Painshill, including some of its history, is here.
The bigger picture
A common approach with insect photography is to zoom in close, sometimes very close, to show the details not normally noticed by the naked eye. Sometimes it’s nice, however, to show the insect in a wider view, perhaps because it has settled on a particularly pretty flower or because the photographer wants to show the insect’s habitat. I think I come at my insect photography with the eye of an aspiring landscape photographer. I naturally tend to situate my insect subjects in a wider setting, where the background is as important as the insect. For me, although the top shot is pleasing, I prefer the version below, because I enjoy the background as much as I do the bee.
In this last image, the bee provides a focal point, a starting and finishing place for the viewer’s eye that, hopefully, stops the picture becoming simply a ‘wallpaper’ image. But, for me, the real impact of this image is the gentle, muted colours of the out of focus border.
What do you think?
Sunset over Lihou
This is Lihou, a small island off the coast of Guernsey and the Channel Islands’ most Western point. It is a nature reserve and only accessible by the public via a tidal causeway for two weeks each month. Our visit sadly was outside this period and the causeway was underwater at sunset so my composition lacked the leading lines I was hoping for. I wish I could convey with this fairly basic shot just how beautiful it was watching the sun set behind the island and listening to the chorus of seabirds. Nature put on a magnificent show that night; these colours are as nature made them – no saturation required.
Specky, again
It’s been a while since I posted an image of the speckled bush cricket nymphs in my garden so here are two, both from June this year.
St. Peter Port
St. Peter Port is the principal town on Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands.
Castle Cornet
One of the town’s squares
The high street
Cafe society
A reader’s haven
Castle cornet reflected in Victorian boating pond
Male crab spider (probably)
When I first posted this, I very tentatively identified it as a male four spot orb weaver spider (araneus quadratus) (maybe). Or possibly a marbled orb weaver ( araneus marmoreus var. pyramidatus). I hadn’t found the I.D. especially easy, and asked if anyone knew better, for them to please tell me! Thanks to two very assured comments below, I have now changed the I.D. to an adult male crab spider (misumena vatia). Thank you both. I should perhaps give up trying to identify the bugs I find in my garden as my success rate is woefully low. Anyway, this tiny crab spider was photographed peering over a leaf in a tree rather high up and I was using my macro lens when I spotted it, so these are big crops. A characterful little thing.
Last rays
Of the many photographs I took at La Corbiere, on Jersey, this summer, this is probably my favourite. I can’t begin to convey adequately how it felt to be there listening to the waves and waiting for the light. When the sun peeked through the clouds just before dipping below the horizon, it was glorious.
Two Burnets and a Forester
The grassy cliffs of Sark, in the Channel Islands, are a vital habitat for insects, including a variety of butterflies and moths. When we visited in July, the five-spot burnet moth was much in evidence. Such a striking beast. I also spotted a forester moth, below. Somewhat rarer.
Burnets are not known to be particularly flighty but they were fluttering all around me that afternoon. Perhaps it was the very breezy conditions. I wasn’t able to manage a decent in flight shot. Below is a huge and rather fuzzy crop, but a record of the moment nonetheless.
Beautiful Jersey
Another shot of my lighthouse muse, La Corbière on Jersey in the Channel Islands. Better compositions are to be had on the rocks below but high tides coincided with sunset during my recent trip so I had to make do with a higher vantage point. The long exposure time needed for the low light has softened and muted the waves. You will just have to take my word for it that they were crashing onto the rocks below and I would have been inundated had I stayed down there. On the upside, I enjoyed seeing how different the same composition could look at the same time on successive days.
Focused Moments 