Its world wetlands day, so to celebrate the wonderful wildlife we find in these habitat I thought I’d share my best shots of freshwater life I took last year. All the underwater shots are in photographic aquarium. This a photo heavy post so I’ve kept the text to a minimum! My first freshwater photo of…
Back in late July the heatwave was in full swing, which had limited the amount of wildlife on show as the hot sun and dwindling water levels put pressure on many species. The crickets and grasshoppers were doing well and early one morning this speckled bush cricket seemed determined to pose for me. Its long…
Living in South Essex I often look with green eyes at those in places like the highlands with pine martens and crested tit in the wilderness on their doorstep or in Norfolk with swallowtail butterflies and large areas of fen to explore, but looking objectively there are some good things to be found in Essex,…
What is the UKs ‘best’ invertebrate? Its (just about still) Insect Week so I decided to try and find out. With 1000s if not 10,000s of species to choose from, it was not easy. This list would no doubt be different from any other person, and I tried to make sure I didn’t pick too…
After a few weeks break from pond creature photography, I got stuck right back in at the end of last month. I decided to do a bit of pond dipping to try and get some common species and improve my shots when, to my surprise, I pulled out an adult smooth newt! It is not…
A couple of weekends ago I was kindly allowed to tag along on Colchester Natural History Groups outing to RSPB Old Hall Marshes. I went along with Pam and Peter, two of the best aquatic ecologists in Essex and we surveyed the borrowdyke near the sea wall. One of the things we found were my…
Last week I tried my new Pentax 1.4x Teleconvertor mounted on the 100mm macro with some extension tubes to see what the results were like. I tested it on a common greater water boatman or backswimmer (Notonecta glauca). These are the uncropped images, which show good detail at high magnification.
I’ve been doing a lot of pond creature photography in the last few weeks, mainly due to doing a lot of pond dipping at work, and one nice find was the water scorpion nymph, which shed its skin. I got some shots without the skin too. and close ups If you are interested in photographing…
A couple of weeks ago I decided to get out the photographic aquarium and try some freshwater invertebrate photography, as I hadn’t tried any for a while. It was pleasingly successful and reminded me why I enjoy this type of photography. I photographed this Berosus sp. water beetle. I managed one nice shot of a…
A few weeks ago thi water scorpion was found. I’ve not been doing to much aquarium photography lately, but I didnt have a good adult water scorpion photo so I had to have a go with this one.