Pond Life!

Water forget-me nots provide loads of flowers on long stems that make great macro subjects

Summer is here according to the calendar…but someone needs to let the weather gods know!

Often these days, we have to catch the fleeting gaps in the weather whenever we can but don’t want to jump into the car, so if you have the space and resources, it is useful to make your garden a useful “studio” with a selection of things to capture on your camera…you’ll be amazed at what you can get from a quick trip outside.

One of the things you could consider is a pond (it doesn’t need to be big to attract wildlife). We have recently converted a hill-water run off ditch that was running through the garden into a small pond with a burn and students coming here for courses now have this feature available to practice their macro photography skills on!

Those of you that know me, know I keep bees…and a water source is essential for them to create honey and also to keep the hives cool on warm days…here you can see one of my ladies who has just dunked her head in a damp piece of moss on one of the stones at the edge of the pond

We also have a lot of these large red Damselflies (about 5cm in length) around the pond, often seen joined together making little damselflies or basking on the rocks, soaking up the heat when the sun pops out for a second or two

If you’ve read my “conquer your nemesis” blog, you’ll know that one of my long standing ones has been foxgloves…today, on a trip to the pond, I conquered that particular nemesis!

For me, the absolute best thing about macro photography is that I am outside, really close to nature and have so much running through my head (depth of field, focus point, is the subject moving, composition, check all four corners…etc etc)…that all thoughts about the daily stresses of life fade away. Macro photography really is a fantastic way of boosting great mental health so why not grab your camera, head outside and give it a go the next time the rain clouds part?