autumn arrives

 

28th Sept. One of the last decent weather days for a while. Before storm Amy swept in and gave us a couple of damp days of low grey cloud. Not too bad for temps as yet. I am still wearing shorts when possible and the heating hasn't gone on yet. But we did book a holiday; the usual trip to our favourite spot in Tenerife in December. Good to have something on the not-too-distant horizon to look forward to. Otherwise it is all just gloom and doom and shortening days and a general lack of sunshine, real and metaphorical.

a Powderhall heron looks down its long nose

this wallcovering plant always goes an impressive colour
at this time of year

 
the verbena comma was busy in the rock garden

hoverfly on aster

Louis's bench again

Autumn crocuses full of hoverflies and wasps

Todays outing started with Mary but she was found my stop-start photo-taking annoyed her sore legs and reckoned she would get on better moving at a continual pace rather than stopping every time I saw apples on the ground or a well attended flower. We parted company and she carried on while I checked the fallen apples for potential butterflies. (There were none, but lots of places to rummage.)

ginko biloba tree again, a favourite!

juvenile moorhen

grey squirrel

Autumn colours

there was a badly posed admiral near the cafe buddliea,
but it would take a better man than I to get a half decent photo of this bland set up

I headed to the Queen Mother's garden as there can often be worthwhile butterflies on the flowers there. I knew it wasn't going to be a great day when there was a noticeable lack. A couple of small whites was about all, other than bumping into Andrew and Unda. We hadn't seen much of each other over the Summer and so walked together round potential hotspots. There wasn't too much about to photo but I really enjoyed the rest of the afternoon just having a banter about all things photography and in particular the wildlife we'd come across. 

small white

We wandered over to the rock garden which seemed the best bet. Sure enough there were still a couple of red admirals on the white bush. One flew off onto this cotoneaster-looking bush nearby where it hid round the other side. I liked the partly hidden shot of it through the leaves of the bush. More atmospheric than the next shot down taken from the other side.

easier to see more of the butterfly
but less intriguing than the first shot

We went over to the verbena and the comma was still there. It was flying from bloom to bloom, sometimes right beside the path, sometimes a few metres away and impossible to photo. We took turns of taking its photo and just chatted when it flew out of range. I was enjoying the chatting as much as the photography and it was a very pleasant spot to enjoy the late afternoon sun that was lighting the site perfectly.

sun's coming out

really perfect lighting

I had noticed some background plants that were a strong yellow colour and even mentioned out loud that they made a very useful backdrop to the comma which would occasionally turn in the right direction to catch the yellow backdrop with the butterfly in the foreground. I hadn't realised just how good when the background was blurred out, and would have taken more photos like this if I had.

Although the light was good and mostly coming from the right direction to light the scene perfectly, I often try to shoot partly or wholly towards the sun for a backlit look. You have to be careful not to just end up with a silhouette. Sometimes I adjusted the amount of compensation to make the shot lighter or darker. Mostly I shoot 2/3rds of a stop darker on the exposure compensation. It is possible to make an image lighter in post but if you have over-exposed a shot and blown out the whites you can't retrieve anything from that. As I've said before I don't shoot in raw because I have neither the hard drive space or desire to massively tweak photos in post. I try to take the best possible shot on site so that there is not a lot required in post, so shooting jpegs makes way more sense. 

One thing I have changed is I also have the camera set to shoot in burst mode at all times although I rarely shoot more than 2 frames at a time. Andrew was shooting between 5 and 20 frames each time he shot a burst and went home with twice the number of shots to work through. About 1600 to my 700. It takes more work to sort through more photos and there comes a time when you are just making a harder job for yourself by shooting too much. However occasionally you catch something that a solo image could easily miss, so I understand the process, I just don't like making the work at home in front of the monitor that hard. I am the sort of person who would have to select the best possible of 17 nearly identical shots. Multiply that by a hundred or two and you have an arduous day's work.

We even managed to chat about stuff other than photography - music and tv - and magic fingers videos (ask Andrew) and surprisingly the comma was still there nearly 2 hours later, as were we, when the Botanics staff rang bells and shouted closing time to throw folk out, and we all realised we'd been there far longer than intended. I think the glorious warm sunshine and promise of the perfect comma picture (and endless banter) were enough to keep us glued to roughly the same spot for the best part of 2 hrs. (I checked the gps output.) It was very enjoyable and definitely accounts for the best pics of the day, although the comma was exceptionally obliging and didn't seem to bother about us standing nearby pointing cameras. Perhaps it was doing a last giant feed to keep it alive while hibernating over Winter?

we were also joined by a (rather worn) large white
the first I'd seen in a fortnight or more

large white

partially backlit and using the yellow backdrop again

A bumble bee disturbed this spider's web and the owner scurried out to see if anyone was coming for dinner. Quite a large and juicy specimen (and ripe for a bird-snack) and when not revealing itself on the web, it made its way back up into the verbena flowers where it sat very well camouflaged. We'd never have noticed it there.

perfect camouflage!

crouching spider, hidden predator

hawthorn shieldbug

speckled wood

5miles in 5hrs
a delightful afternoon!