Wildlife Macro Images

Have added some new macro images of insects on the wildlife page - have a look and leave me a comment.

Lyme Park, Derbyshire

On a beautiful day in May, we visited Lyme Park , a National Trust property at Disley in Cheshire

Lyme Hall was originally a remote hunting lodge. In Tudor times a house was built there and this was turned into an Italianate palace by the Venetian architect Leoni in the early 18th Century. It stands in a fine park with commanding views of the Cheshire Plains amongst ornate gardens. The house was once a home of the Legh family - later Lords Newton - who also had large estates in mid-Lancashire.

The house and gardens became more famous when used by the BBC in their adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' - as it was chosen to be the home of Mr D'Arcy, Pemberley House.

To view more pictures, please click on the images above.

Jubilee Campus, Nottingham University

On April 21st, we visited the Jubilee Campus in Nottingham, to photograph the unusual buildings that make up the University campus. To see the images click on the 'Landscapes' tab.

Garden Birds @ Whisby Nature Reserve

In March, we visited Whisby again and spent some time watching the birds flocking to the feeding stations. There was a good variety of birds, including Tree Sparrows, Blue Tits, Robins, Chaffinches to name but a few. These images were taken with the Panasonic Lumix GH2, the micro four-thirds camera. Like a DSLR it has interchangeable lenses. But the best thing about it, is, the fact hat it is lighter, easy to focus and the lenses much smaller in size than the zoom lenses created for any DSLR. To view more, click on the 'Birds' tab and there you will find a link to my Flickr pages.

Portraiture

Between the Studio Photography course, we looked at various types of portraiture. To view some of the edited images, click on the Creative tab.

Dark Ground, Light Ground Still Life Photography

The first project as part of my Studio Photography course at South Notts College is looking at dark and light ground photography of glassware, using a softbox for the man source of back lighting. Here's a couple of images from my first attempt. to view more, go to the 'Creative' page.

Alpacas at Kinoulton

During a walk along the Grantham Canal, a local smallholding has a small herd of Alpacas and Donkeys.

I spent sometime photographing the Alapcas. They have very expressive faces and were extremely inquisitive of the camera.

To see some more images, click on the wildlife page.

Smoke Trails

Using my studio lighting set for the first time, I tried some creative photography on smoke trails using a lit incense stick. I used 2 lights, one with a softbox and the other with a gold umbrella to bounce light onto the smoke. Once I had taken a few images I uploaded them into Photoshop and used level adjustments and inverting the colours to create different effects. 2 of the images are shown below. To see more, have a look at my Flickr Photostream.

Bradgate Park, Leicester

On the 2nd, we visited Bradgate Park in Leicester along with thousands of other people! However, once you walked away from the main paths, then you can start to appreciate the park which has a deer herd, ruined tudor mansion, as well as lots of old trees.
The deer are Fallow and can be seen in small groups, all around the park. To see a selection of images from Bradgate Park, click on the wildlife section.

Cromford Canal

On a New Year's walk along the Cromford Canal in Derbyshire, we spotted a group of Little Grebes. One was fishing under the water (which we could view as the water was very clear), when it popped up with a large Minnow in its' beak, and then after several attempts it managed to swallow it whole. To see more of the images, click on the Birds section.