Busy bees
The day improved later in the afternoon so I headed for the overgrown field where I had photographed purple avens in June - I figured that the place should yield some other flowers as well and was secretly hoping for thistles. I got rewarded as there were thistles-a-plenty, with bumblebees busily working on them. I set up shop close to two big thistles so that I could easily point the camera on either one of them depending on which one was getting more of the action. And then all I needed to do was to wait for the customers to arrive and there was hardly a quiet moment! A beautiful butterfly wouldn’t have hurt, but all I got was some small(ish) brown(ish) thing that I can’t find in my bug book - my butterfly identifying skills are infinitely worse than my flower ditto.
I also tried to catch a bumblebee in flight, but I couldn’t quite figure out the trick. When the bees take off to flight, they don’t seem to prepare it in any way so I always missed the moment. This one I caught by accident - I was shooting the other three bees when a fourth arrived. Yes I know the flying one is OOF but I don’t care!
Fleur du jour - Harebell
Campanula rotundifolia
- English: Harebell
- Swedish: Liten blåklocka
- Finnish: Kissankello
It’s an usually cold day for July, and then it also rained a little bit. I opted to photograph some flowers close to home and these harebells couldn’t really get much closer - about 5 metres from my front door! The wind wasn’t making this easy as the harebells have a tendency to sway from the slightest whisper of a wind, but I managed to squeeze in a few sharp shots. Out of the whole bunch of harebells growing there, these two stood out - diagonally leaning to opposite directions to create a dynamic composition, with a clean background.
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Image specs: ISO 200, f5.6, 1/160, Canon 300mm f4L, 31mm ext. tube
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With nothing better to do, I explored the forest and found three more of the lesser butterfly orchid, all of them quite withered. It looks like I really got lucky to find the one I did at first… because it was the only one still reasonably photogenic. There are also some old remains of more of them, so had I ventured in the forest just a couple of weeks earlier, I’m sure I would’ve found these orchids quite easily. But now I will just make a note for next year…
1 commentPhoto tips discontinued
I have discontinued my Photo tips series. Instead of trying to make everyone a better photographer (hah!), I just stopped visiting Fotosidan. Who needs the aggravation.I created a list of the Fleur du jour entries instead. Someone else’s turn to get aggravated… LOL!
1 comment
