To cut or not to cut

Sue's brother Chris and his wife Sue came down from Scotland to stay with us last weekend. They wanted to get out and visit one of the Derbyshire Stately Houses. They had been to Haddon recently, and Chatsworth was a no-go area because of the Horse Trials (not sure what they were alleged to have done) so out of the big three that left Hardwick Hall.

This is another National Trust property so I had the pleasure of getting in for free (as a member of the NT), whilst the others had to cough up nearly £10 pounds each. Most people will know the saying "Hardwick Hall - more glass than wall", and one has to admit that it's not far off the mark:



As with Calke Abbey photography is not allowed inside the hall, which in spite of all the glass is very gloomy inside, so we will have to be content with shots of the gardens. We arrived before the hall was open so spent a good hour walking round the gardens, which are well worth a visit on their own. From the rear of the house the formal gardens open out into open countryside and I was taken by the contrast between the formal hedges and the trees beyond in this shot:



The gardens are divided by high formal edges into many separate areas such as an orchard, herb garden, vegtables, border plants etc. In one of the walkways between these areas I spotted this white bench in a quiet corner which appealed to me:



As you can see the bench sits on a typical English lawn: well manicured apart from a few daisies which must have shot up overnight because the lawn shows every sign of being recently cut. It made me think of when we moved into our current house five summers ago: the house had been previously occupied by a single man who worked away during the week and didn't have much time for gardening. When we moved in the lawn in the back garden was completely overgrown. When we had eventually unpacked everything and began to settle in I had to set out a complete morning in which to cut the lawn back to a normal length. I was a bit reluctant to do this because actually I quite liked the overall effect of long grasses going to seed mixed with a myriad of wild flowers (aka weeds) such as daisies, buttercups, dandelions, clover etc, etc. But convention won out over radicalism and the lawn duly received its short back and sides.

I was quite pleasantly surprised therefore on leaving the area with the bench to go into the herb garden. There at the back of the garden an area had been set aside to 'go wild', and here it is in all its glory:



Hopefully when we eventually find our little country cottage it will have a garden large enough to set an area aside to go wild in a similar fashion. I will be quite happy to share the maintenance of my garden with Mother Nature.

...and Blooms

Well, it was slow coming. but the cold and wet April has finally given way to a warm and dry start to May. Over a period of a few days the countryside has been transformed by the fresh greens of new foliage and carpets of wild flowers.

The fine weather has given many opportunities to get out with my camera, too many in fact to document in this blog. So I will have to be selective and choose only one expedition to talk about. This is a trip to Lea Gardens, famous for its collection of many varieties of rhododendrons planted on a mid Derbyshire hillside. Here, any time between April and June you can enjoy walking along paths with tightly packed bushes of hung with abundant large luxuriant flowers.

If you go in early May,as I did, you will find a mixture of flowers that are past their best, many more in full bloom and some still in bud which will be blooming in June.

I like to get in very close to the blooms with my macro lens. The blooms are so large and have such long pistils and stamens that it is impossible to get everything in focus at close quarters. So I make a virtue out of necessity and use a large aperture to reduce depth of field to a minimum. When it works this can give a dream like effect with stamens apparently emerging from a colouful mist:



Even from a further distance it is difficult to keep everything in focus. In the next shot the fronts of the petals and the stamens are in focus but the centre of the bloom, from which the stamens emerge is just a white cloud:



Finally, one with everything in focus, because it is still in bud, and which reminds me of a raspberry ice cream sundae:

Spring Blooms

Well almost. The last few days of April have been just as cool and wet as the earlier part. I've been keeping an eye out for wild flowers during my daily bike ride through the park. There are plenty of cowslips to be seen, but very little else. A friend says cowslips like wet weather, so that probably accounts for it.

Just out of interest I looked back at last year's photos and found that before the end of April I had been out on several wild flower safaris. But last year April was exceedingly dry and relatively warm. After April, however, the weather deteriorated into the wettest summer we have had for years, and my wild flower safaris came to a full stop.

So I decided that this year's wild flower photography had to start this week. Last Spring also coincided with the purchase of my E330, which had hit rock bottom prices due to the introduction of newer models. Although the newer models have Live View facilties, which had been pioneered in the E330, they lacked a folding out LCD screen, which makes low level close up photography so much more convenient. I put the camera on a very small and light tripod, which can place the camera almost at ground level, and pull out the folding LCD so that I can look at it from above. I still have to kneel down to compose and focus, but at least I don't have to lie down on damp grass!

Because the E330 was a new tool this time last year, I had not yet honed my skills on it. Over the last year I have gradually found out what works best for flowers, and what works best for butterflies and insects. So I'm looking forward to getting a lot of good shots this year.

When I first started photographing wild flowers seriously, about five years ago, I tended to do a lot of 'record' shots to help me familiarise myself with all the varieties. Quite often I would not know what a flower was until I got back home and compared my shots against several wild flower recognition books I have. It's surprising how difficult it can be to identify flowers this way, and I would take shots of leaves and stalks etc to further aid identification.

Now that I am more familiar with the different varieties I am more interested in taking more 'artistic' photographs, using narrow depth of field to isolate single blooms, and creating nice blurry out of focus backgrounds. Putting the camera on a tripod theoretically means that you don't have to worry about the shutter speed so can concentrate on selecting exactly the right aperture to give the right depth of focus. The 'right' aperture might give a fairly slow shutter speed, which does not matter as far as camera shake is concerned, because the camera is on a tripod. But the subject, although anchored to the ground, is very susceptible to the slightest breeze making it jump all around the place. So I spend a lot of time after composing and focusing, just waiting for that brief second when the subject is completely still. Of course, I could use flash, which provides sufficent light to provide a high shutter speed. But in general I find flash gives an unsatisfactory result, giving almost black backgrounds and blown out specular highlights on petals.

I started in Holmebrook Valley Park, then moved up to Linacre Woods and then drove over to Tideswell Dale. Holmebrook Valley Park yielded up this shot of a cowslip:



Also in the park I found a few clumps of Greater Stitchwort, most were in bad condition, but one small clump had a few pristine blooms:



Moving up to Linacre Woods therewere quite a few bluebells out, but it will be another week or so before the ground is completely carpeted with them.



There were also plenty of wood anenomes, most of them pure white, but I prefer the ones which are tinged with purple:



Tideswell Dale proved rather disappointing. There were a few more butterbur flowers around than I saw a few weeks ago but other species were few and far between. A distinct lack of butterflies as well. I did spot one orangetip but it was the only one and did not stop to have its photograph taken. But a few Red Campions were just emerging:



And finally, lest I forget, a Forget-me-not: