Monday 8th August 2011

Bubble-icious.

0.4s, f/11 (approx), ISO 400

Friday 5th August 2011

Time to get the caterpillar spray out in the greenhouse! It's a shame to lose a potential butterfly, but on the other hand I don't want to lose my aubergine plants either!

1/40s, f/13, ISO 200

Sunday 24th July 2011

Macro purple flower.

1/50s, f/11 (approx), ISO 800

Wednesday 20th July 2011

Still working on the grasshopper shoes and I think they're improving, what do you think? I'm now going in search of a certain shot, rather than just trying to photograph grasshoppers close up. Plus this guy had a pretty colourful tail, which helps. At first just taking any photo is hard enough, but after a while you get used to the setup and the subject mannerisms and can start to bring composition into play.

1/60s, f/11, ISO 800

Tuesday 19th July 2011

"Soooo many roooses" - can anyone get the reference?

2s, f/11 (approx), ISO 200

Monday 11th July 2011

More grasshoppers! When I took today's photos I was fairly pleased with them, thought I'd captured everything I wanted in a photo, but when I looked at them on a computer they seem to be looking that special zing, or maybe I've just been taking too many of them. I think I need a bit of a break, no more grasshoppers for a while!

1/100s, f/10 (approx), ISO 800

Friday 8th July 2011

I took a stroll round the lake at the end of my road hoping to find grasshoppers, but there didn't seem to be any around. I took in one more field before heading home, and happened upon some gorgeous salmon coloured damselflies that let me get REALLY close to take photos. I think they were female Common Blues. A spot to return to!

1/250s, f/10, ISO 800

Monday 4th July 2011

I decided it was time to diversify from macro grasshopper shots, although I'm still working on those for a particular photo I'm after. Today, instead, I went to the dragonfly pond at Knypersley reservoir and found a collection of Azure Blues. This one posed for me for a while letting me get right in close, all the others flew off as soon as I got within range for a photo.

1/50s, f/11 (approx), ISO 800

Saturday 2nd July 2011

These small bugs (under a cm long) live in the hedge in my garden, and bit me when I give them their twice yearly trim. This one was crawling over my hand so I put it on the BBQ cover and grabbed the camera. Surprisingly by the time I'd reversed the lens it was still there. I haven't managed to identify exactly it as the red patches and black head are hard to place, but I've got it down to the order Hemiptera, possibly a male Stenotus Binotatus. But more to the point - look at the massive spike it's hiding underneath its thorax!

1/40s, f/10 (approx), ISO 800

Monday 27th June 2011

More grasshoppers!

1/50s, f/10 (approx), ISO 800

Sunday 12th June 2011

Copied from an idea seen elsewhere, just to play with cameras and macro when a friend came round with her new camera.

5s, f/16 (approx), ISO 800

Friday 10th June 2011

I've found a wonderful haven of grasshoppers on the wasteland near my office (unfortunately a development site), so I went down after work to entertain passers by with my head and lens to the ground and bum in the air. I'm eager to upgrade my equipment as now I have the subjects I'd really like to improve the quality of the shots. I was trying to get a landscape head shot to submit to the countryfile calendar competition, but this ended up being my favourite one of the set (240 taken, 100 deleted on camera for being blurred, another 100 deleted on computer for being blurred, of those 40 there were 6 I considered good by my current standards).

1/40s, f/10 (approx), ISO 800

Thursday 9th June 2011

An insect that landed on my car window.

1/40s, f/11 (approx), ISO 800

Monday 6th June 2011

This is a yellow dung-fly. I'm fascinated that every time I go out on a bug hunt I see something new, and most of them (the flies at least) are quite easy to identify in the book. It's not perfectly crisp but they don't exactly stay still!

1/40s, f/11 (approx), ISO 800

Wednesday 1st June 2011

This fellow is a leafhopper nymph (at least I think it is!), and it's weensy! If you crouch down and run your hand over a patch of wild grass, and see tiny little flecks jumping about from one blade to another, that's what this is. The image is a bit grainy as I bumped the ISO up to 1600 in my desperation to capture the wealth of insects despite the inadequacy of light, I won't be doing that again!

18mm (approx), 1/60s, f/9 (approx), ISO 1600

Saturday 28th May 2011

Very pleased with this photo! It's some species of grasshopper, haven't quite identified which one as it didn't have wings and all the ones in my book do. I love his little half-smiling, half-coy expression.

[Update - Research tells me that the lack of wings is because this is a grasshopper nymph, i.e. a youngster rather than an adult, also known as a hopper. Grasshoppers go through a series of transformations known as instars, where they moult their shells, before they take their final adult form. Nymphs have fully grown limbs but their wings, colour, body size aren't developed].

70mm (approx), 1/25s, f/11 (approx), ISO 400

Saturday 21st May 2011

Greenbottle.

1/60s, f/11 (approx), ISO 800

Monday 16th May 2011

Another flower from my garden, taken for a weekly competition.

70mm (approx), 1s, f/16, ISO 800

Friday 13th May 2011

I quite like the abstract nature of this one, and one flower stamen doesn't always look like another! This is inside the snapdragon mouth of an antirrhinum growing on the street-facing wall of an abandoned garden.

18mm, 1/25s, f/10, ISO 800

Thursday 5th May 2011

Dandelion seeds. I also got a photo of a green lacewing which has beautiful shimmery translucent wings (less so in the photo), but I prefer this one.

1/80s, f/10 (approx), ISO 800