Photography: Photo of the Day – August 8th 2010

The amount of flying ants that seem to have descended on the area this afternoon is like a scene with a film that has swarm in the title, and with a toddler in tow we’ve taken shelter indoors for the rest of the afternoon. I’ve been aware of flying ants in previous years but the massive numbers of these aggressive insects was mind blowing. My wife was the only one to get bitten, but not through want of trying from the airborne beasts.

The biggest infestation was in a small park a few roads from us, and though one of my first thoughts was one of getting my camera for some better shots, I haven’t been back so this photo comes courtesy of my iPhone 3GS, and a slightly shaky hand. The photo doesn’t show off the true effect, but the ground was moving with the sheer number of ants.

Flying Ants

Photography: Photo of the Day – July 12th 2010

This one was taken in St Albans yesterday. I only recently discovered that these are pre-metamorphosis ladybirds.

Panasonic FZ38 Macro Mode | 1/80 | f/3.0 | ISO-80

Photography: Photo of the Day – July 9th 2010

The weather girl is calling it a heatwave, I call it the perfect weather to get out into the back garden to look for bugs to take photos of. The macro capabilities of the Panasonic FZ38 are fab, and this photo is a great showcase of that – this little fellow was about 1cm in length.

Panasonic FZ38 Macro Mode | 1/60 | f/2.8 | ISO-80

I hope to venture further than the back garden at some point and would like to take something other than macro photos, even though that’s where my interest in photography is. The above photo and a couple more from today are at Fable Photos.

Photography: Photo of the Day – July 8th 2010

Long story short, I now have a Panasonic FZ38 and from the results so far I am absolutely thrilled. While the image quality may not be as good as my A300, I never used to print large images and use them mainly for web or standard photos, and as such the images produced by my FZ38 are perfectly good.

My photo of the day is a docile bee that must have been suffering in the heat, as we all have been! I took this at lunchtime en route to the canal.

Panasonic FZ38 Macro Mode | 1/100 | f/3.6 | ISO-80

On a whim I registered a new domain last night which has a nifty gallery module, and as such I present to you Fable Photos where you will find a bigger version of the above photo along with 4 more photos taken today, including 3 of a cricket (or grasshopper – can you tell me which?) which wasn’t frightened off by a lumbering human invading it’s personal space with a big camera!

Photography: Photo of the Day – July 2nd 2010

So my new camera, Sony A300, arrived yesterday and my new lens arrived and so into the back garden I went with my Sigma 70-300 f4-5.6 Macro DG. One problem, for the first evening in weeks the sun wasn’t shining, there was lots of cloud cover and as such there was not a great deal of light. Now one of the weaknesses of the lens is its performance in low light, that much I knew when I bought it, but I wasn’t that bothered as I intend to use it decent daylight. I took just a handful of shots and though the photos weren’t that great, it did show me that the potential for decent macro photos is most definitely there. This chap decided to fly into the garden and become the subject of my lens testing.

Sony A300 & Sigma 70-300 f4-5.6 Macro DG | 1/160 | f/5 | ISO-400

It’s nice to get a photo like this without having to get really close to the subject, but this lens is very bid when fully extended in macro mode and I really need a tripod, like yesterday!