Tag: insect

Chalk grasslands

I am very fortunate to live on the North Downs in Surrey, England where we have within our neighbourhood woodlands and a small pocket of chalk grassland.  I only recently discovered the significance of chalk grassland through a community group formed in the Dome Hill neighbourhood of Caterham.  All the property owners clubbed together to buy a stretch of grassland to avoid it being bought by developers and it turns out that this is a fairly unique parcel of chalk grassland which we are now preserving.

Why are Chalk Grasslands so special?

Chalk grasslands develop on shallow lime-rich soils, overlaying chalk rocks. Most of England was once covered by woodlands, but the Downs (in the south-east of England) were cleared by ancient people to graze animals, mainly sheep.  This created an open landscape with few trees and shrubs, and species-rich grassland.  It is one of the richest plant communities where up to 50 species of plant can be found in a square metre.  The UK has about half of the world’s chalk grasslands.  A wide variety of insects and wildlife can also be found here – some of the  plants and animals are totally dependent on chalk grassland and cannot survive anywhere else. For further information visit the Old Surrey Downs web site.

I spent a couple of hours in a small section of our little parcel of grassland on Saturday 9 June 2012 with my camera and here are some of the results:-

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Series of Four #11 – Macro photography – Critter Art

Series of Four

This is the eleventh Blog in the “Series of Four” series. Each blog focuses on a different aspect of photography, either technical or creative.  To see the full set of “Series of Four” blogs, click here.

Macro photography – Critter Art

Macro photography is the art and science of taking hyper-closeup photographs.  I have enjoyed macro photography immensely.  It takes you into another world which looks very alien but which is actually around us all the time.   A certain amount of specialised equipment is used such as marco lenses, extension tubes etc. but you will be surprised how much you can do with the equipment you have, assuming you are prepared to get up close to whatever spider, fly or other critter you want to capture.

Today I came across two dead ‘daddy-long-leg’ insects on my windowsill (A crane fly in the insect family Tipulidae).  I took out my macro lens (see the setup I used at the end of this post) and a couple of hours later here are the results – Critter Art.

 

Here are the unfortunate insects on the windowsill – there are hundreds of them around at this time of year but I have never looked at them this closely before. 

The equipment

The equipment I used was as follows:-

  • 2 insects (dead* in this case which make it a lot easier),
  • 1 dining room table (with spouse permission)
  • Canon 1D MkIII camera
  • Canon EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM  Lens
  • Canon Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX  Flash
  • DG Extension tubes
  • Yongnu MC-36R remote release
  • BENBO 1 tripod
  • I used the manual settings of 1/125 sec, f/9, ISO 100

(* The insects were already dead – promise – but it does tend to make them more cooperative.)

 

 

Capturing flies flying

One of my interests in photography is capturing the ordinary in extraordinary ways.  It is fascinating to see the ordinary facets of life around us from unusual perspectives.  For example, there are billions of flies in the world – they are generally regarded as a menace and an irritation and yet they perform a critical role in cleaning up nature’s mess.  I took time out recently to try to capture some images of flies in my garden in Surrey, England.  The challenge was to photograph them actually flying.  I used my trusted Canon 1D MkIII with a Canon 100mm Macro lens and ring flash. Continue reading “Capturing flies flying”