The bigger picture
A page dedicated to the celebration of nature and nature photography
This shot was taken at a time when wasps are relatively docile but at a time when most people suffer their unpleasant sting. They are no longer faithful to their nest but obsessed with sugary foods as they spend the remaining days of their lives in late summer desperately trying to find a source, often at the expense of an unwary person. The shot was taken in a wild and free setting using a series of Canon speedlights to freeze the motion of the insect and recreate natural day light conditions. In all, the shoot took two days to complete with just the one frame being acceptable. The majority of the images were ruined due to the very narrow depth of field the camera gives when shooting at such high magnifications, which is about 2cm at this distance. Because of this most of the wasps were out of focus either flying in front of or behind the strawberry.
In early spring each year our native amphibians head out from hibernation to a pond where they are likely to remain faithful to for their entire life. They join many, if not hundreds of other individuals in this annual event over a brief period where they gather to mate. This individual was found leaving such a pond to run the gauntlet with local traffic on a busy lane in Lancashire. It's a sad fact that now many of our amphibian ponds are fragmented by highways and species like the common toad, now listed as a UK BAP species have to do this each each year to breed. Fortunately, the future looks brighter due to planning policy changes, which aim to target species of principle importance, which means that any new roadways have to take this delightful little creature into consideration as part of the planning process. Good old toady!
This shot of a male mute swan was taken on a grey, overcast morning when the light was flat and all shadow and highlight detail can be recorded with little fuss. The shot was very simplistic, just the swan and an uncluttered lake behind. I deliberately over exposed the picture so that the swan's outline is almost merging with the reflected sky on the water, but yet still retain colour and contrast within the beak and the legs of the bird.
One of my most recent and favourite images was taken on a recent trip to the well known Donna Nook seal colony off the
You may be surprised to hear that snowdrops are particularly difficult to photograph? Well it’s true, they are! This shot was taken less than half a mile from my home but to get it, I made two trips and shot nearly 200 frames. The reason for this is that snowdrops are very prone to the slightest breeze. In what would seem like the calmest of days in our world, their little flower heads will be nodding like lanterns in a gale force wind. For the shot to work, I needed all three heads to be in the same plane of focus at the same time and take advantage of a very narrow depth of field, which renders the foreground and background completely out of focus. The shot was taken using a 500mm telephoto lens rested on the ground to give an intimate view of the plant. The foreground grasses are so close to the lens that they are recorded as a green mist, which can be clearly seen along the base of the picture.