Houdini
Croatia made up the vast majority of my photos for the month of May (see Croatia gallery), but something was happening at the bottom of my garden while I was away that I was very excited to get back and see more of. The foxes that have made their home at the far end of my garden had some cubs which were now finally starting to come out and enjoy their surroundings. At first they came out as the sun set so getting any actual photos of them was near on impossible unless I had night vision. The grass was also long which didn’t help matters so I had to bide my time before seeing them out more and exhibiting more natural behaviour that I really wanted to capture.
After getting just the one shot of a cub in the tall grass using an ISO well over what I would use normally just to get a photo, I decided to cut it all back before it rained (again), and hope they still came out and play when lighting was more favourable. Finally as the days grew longer and the grass now much shorter, the two fox cubs came out to play one morning as they caught the morning sun that fleetingly appeared for a few hours. From my back window I could view them perfectly as they played. I would also take the occasional trip down to the garden and sneak as close as I could to them to get more intimate portraits.
I did also note that the smaller of the cubs had mange on its leg which it continually scratched and licked. I had seen this in the father who at one point last year had a very sore looking tail. Hopefully this will clear up with some sun on it.
As well as the foxes, a pair of nesting blue tits were using a nest box on the wall of my house overlooking the garden. I took up position close to the nest box and cranked my shutter speed up to over 8000th of a second to capture the parents going in and out the nest. Hopefully both the fox cubs and the nest box will be a recurring spring occurrence which continues each year.
As well as fox cubs, I took a trip to Upfest, a festival I attended back in 2018 but had not managed to get back to since so I took the opportunity one weekend while the weather was holding out (just), to get over to bedminster for the annual graffiti art event.
I was very lucky to meet and chat to one of the artists that were still working on their pieces. Audrey Kawasaki who painted this tiger mural is a US born artist now living in the uk with over 400k followers on Instagram and a big name in the art world. She had just finished her first upfest mural and came over to chat to some of us as I took some photos about being finished and how happy she was with the piece. It was great to put a face to the artwork as well.
many of the artists were still working on their pieces so it would be nice to re-visit at some point to view the finished works.
Along with the new pieces going up, it is always nice to see some of the works that have been done from previous years such as the iconic seagull which I first photographed back in 2018.
A trip to RSPB Nagshead on the Welsh boarders one blustery wet June weekend was a great opportunity to try and get some images of some lesser known summer visitors to our cold and wet ‘summer’ shores such as the redstart and pied flycatcher. Unfortunately although sighted on the day along with hawfinches, bullfinches and spotted flycatchers, photography wise the overcast, wet day put any idea of great photos to rest. I did settle with a couple of more common species that don’t mind the rain as much however. I will try my luck here again next year.
I also have some more Street photography style images that I took while in Croatia as I strolled around the various cities there.
Finally the month of June saw a return to an area of photography that I have not been able to do since the sale of my Canon gear a couple of years ago. I took the plunge with a new macro lens that would get me even closer than my 1x1 canon 100mm lens did with a X2 magnification manual focus lens from a company called Laowa. This 65mm macro lens was designed specifically for APS-C cameras so I jumped in with both feet with the plan to use this lens on a couple of upcoming trips. For now I have used the lens as single shot macro work which already has produced some fantastic results that has blown me away. The next step is to add a flash and defuser so I can take multiple images to stack which should take there sorts of images to the next level, so watch this space!
FIN
