Garden Pond Coming Together
With plenty of time during lockdown I gave the ‘nature pond’ a bit of a tidy up. The pond was originally built by my dad about fourteen years ago and it has stood the test of time. With the liner leaking and becoming cracked after years of use it was time for a revamp. Originally it had a pump fed stream but I have guessed that that is where the water had been escaping from. This wasn’t ideal at the best of times and with the water being constantly pumped out the pond kept on emptying. As you can see the pond looked very good for wildlife back when it was first built. My plan was to use some of the ferns that were around the garden to plant up the edges and breaking up the border. With the garden having had quite the change over the past two years
Garden Pond Coming Together
With plenty of time during lockdown I gave the ‘nature pond’ a bit of a tidy up. The pond was originally built by my dad about fourteen years ago and it has stood the test of time. With the liner leaking and becoming cracked after years of use it was time for a revamp. Originally it had a pump fed stream but I have guessed that that is where the water had been escaping from. This wasn’t ideal at the best of times and with the water being constantly pumped out the pond kept on emptying. As you can see the pond looked very good for wildlife back when it was first built. My plan was to use some of the ferns that were around the garden to plant up the edges and breaking up the border. With the garden having had quite the change over the past two years
Field Test – An Alien Landscape
Having had fun playing around with the soft box around the garden I headed out to try it out and see how it performed whilst out in the field. I didn’t have any particular subject in mind and to be honest it was just refreshing to get out of the house and go for a walk. My friend Jonathan Barnes had joined and before anyone tell’s me off, yes it was socially distanced. Jonathan has a great interest in trains and mainly focuses on photographing various different trains and today was a bit different for him. We first went to check on an owl box I had put up and it looked as though squirrels had started building a nest, not surprising as we are quite close to town. Yomping 18ft up a tree which was soaked through from last night’s rain was no easy feat but was fun to
Spidey Senses
Being stuck indoors most of the time means that you are constantly trying to find new subjects to photograph. Whether that’s setting up a bird feeder to attract birds closer to your garden hide or setting up a camera trap to capture the garden’s nocturnal visitors, there are many ways to keep busy. For me one of my new found favourite things to photograph is macro subjects. I love to see the importance of the small things and that’s the magic of using a macro lens. You get to see in detail the things that usually pass us by, it makes us stop in awe of how incredible and diverse the animal or plant kingdom can be. Having previously mentioned my friend Javiar, I dropped him a message about softening the light on my subjects when using flash. He suggested a few soft box options so I thought I would
Garden Focus Stacking
With the UK’s covid situation not improving and yet another lockdown us photographers have mostly been forced to work from home. Trying to motivate yourself to get out and do things can often be a hard task for many of us with the times being so glum, yet we can all still be creative. I have the good fortune to know Javier Aznar. He is an extremely skilful macro photographer and after browsing on Instagram I came across some of his latest work. It was beautifully shot and anyone who makes others see the pure beautiful in the smaller creatures is a worthy photographer. After a bit of weight up I decided to head out in the garden to see whether I could find any macro subjects of my own. Temperatures are rarely in double figures at the minute so it was a bit of gamble to find a subject