Framedlight

Later in January we went back to Wicken Fen and I used my infrared converted camera to take a few images. I have converted these to black and white.

These pictures date from January this year when I went with members of the Cambridge Camera Club to Wicken Fen, ostensibly to photograph birds. It was a very dull day, but we did see a marsh harrier as the evening was drawing in, not really photographable for me but nice to view. The konik ponies were grazing on the side of the river.

Alan cycled over and met me at the fen and we had a walk along the Lode. Seeing the windmill reminded me that I had always intended to snap it with the Holga. After lunch the sun was really burning and after the frustrating effort of trying to photograph the dragonflies in the dipping pools I walked back and spent my time by the river. I took a couple of Holga shots and then some macros with a variety of lenses and extension tubes. The first yellow flower picture is of the bladderwort growing at Wicken - a rare carnivorous plant and I was rather taken with the dandelion table with the 4 dining hoverflies. It was Saturday and as it was so fine Wicken became exceedingly busy. As the heat intensified I realised it was time to go home. Thanks to Ann for arranging and hosting the outing.

Last weekend I went to Wicken Fen in Suffolk as part of a trip out with the RPS Nature Group, led by Ann Miles. The weather was overcast and cool in the morning but in the afternoon the sun came out and it got very hot and humid. Good for the dragonflies in the dipping pools where the group was mainly stationed and during the afternoon some effort was put into trying to photograph the brown hawkers who were doing aerial displays back and forth on a swift, tantalizing, zigzag path. Ann managed to get a couple of very good shots but all I saw was a small blur passing the lens and never even managed to press the shutter! Here are a selection of the pictures I took in the morning when the light was even and the dew still on the reeds. I was using a Nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro lens on my D800e body

Feeling a little stale I had ordered an infrared filter which arrived while I was away in Wales. I thought it was not possible to take infrared photographs with modern DSLRs as they have a filter in them which takes out most of the infrared light. However I had seen some forum postings saying that you can achieve something, although you need super long exposure times. The filter I bought was sent from a company called Luxan in Germany - it is only a cheapish one as these can be very expensive and I wanted to see what I could get without shelling out a lot of money. It is 870nm (the end of the visible spectrum of light is around 700nm) which is pretty hefty and cuts out at least 10 stops of light. My first outing was to Audley End House. It was a very dull day, which was a mistake as I was getting exposure times of 6 minutes at f/13 and ISO 1600. When I looked at the pictures they all had a very bright spot on them. Consulting the internet I found that it was because I was using a Nik...