Spring has Sprung

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Some recent mild weather here in the UK has encouraged the life in my garden to wake from its winter stupor. As a keen macro photographer, I always enjoy spring but I’ve been particularly looking forward to it this year as a result of joining the Meet Your Neighbours (MYN) project. For a couple of months now I’ve been waiting for some insect life to appear to allow me to practice shooting in the MYN style. Finally, over the last couple of weeks or so some insects and other invertebrates have started to emerge. Seven Spot Ladybirds are particularly plentiful and I’ve now seen a few bees, some shieldbugs and even a fleeting glimpse of a butterfly. As you can see, the Ladybirds in particular have quickly got into the swing of things.

 

 

At this stage my images are still a little experimental but I’m already reasonably pleased with one or two them. Over the next few months I intend to experiment with a variety of different image styles and a variety of different subjects.

 

 

I’ll be honest and say that I didn’t immediately fall in love with this style of imagery when I first started to see it several years ago. But the more I thought about it, and the more I read about the aims of the MYN project, the more it started to make sense. Seen in isolation like this we just see the beauty of the individual creature, with no distractions. It’s hard to think of a better way to celebrate biodiversity and the sheer variety of life on our doorsteps.

 

 

The images I have taken so far have all been reasonably high magnification images, typically between 1x magnification and 2x magnification. The exception would be the tiny Globular Springtail above, which required a magnification level of around 4x. Some subjects are placed directly onto white Perspex, others are raised above it in some way to prevent too much light bleeding through from behind, although I’ve yet to find a perfect way  of doing this. Plenty more experimentation required I think.

 

 

Once the larger species start to emerge (dragonflies, butterflies etc) I will turn my attention to them. This will no doubt require an entirely different approach but I’m very much looking forward to the challenge.