Dragonfly

Well, a week of daily posts was exhausting and I need a break.  But before I go silent for a bit, one more photo post for y’all.

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I often suffer from gear envy.

I think that I might like to buy a D-SLR to give it a try.  Then I castigate myself: I have two very good cameras that I don’t know how to use very well yet.  I must first exhaust their possibilities before moving on to bigger (and heavier, and more expensive) gear.

I bemoan my inability to take photographs of dragonflies.  I love their jewel-like colour, their sparkle and pizzazz.  I love how they fly in quick darts and sudden changes of direction.  I love their gossamer wings.  My favourite are the emerald green dragonflies.  But I’ll take what I can get.

Is the below a dragronfly or damselfly? What’s the difference?

I am very impressed with the below two photos.  They were both taken with the Ricoh Caplio R7 – a point and shoot.  I pointed, I tweaked, I sighed, I shot, I tweaked some more, I despaired and I shot a few more.  And I’m rather pleased with the results and amazed by what the camera can do.

A dragonfly on a fencepost, near Picked Hill, Wiltshire, August 2009.

S/he very obligingly stayed around while I tried a few different shots.

So, until I have exhausted the capabilities of my two current cameras, I must cease lusting after a D-SLR. (Repeat after me …)

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For some more briliant photographs of wildfowers and dragonflies (and waterbirds and spiders and and and), you must check out the excellent London (almost) Daily Nature Photo blog, which I came to via Flighty who dropped by here via Nikkipolani.  I love blogging (but I still need a break; life calls).

Field of Poppies

It is really summer when you see this:

Field of Poppies, North Hampshire, August 2009.

This is actually the first year that I have seen a field of poppies in England.  Usually, I come upon the fields after the poppies have bloomed – I know by the seed heads that they were here but I have missed them in their red dominance of fields as I see only the later blooming ones scattered along the disturbed earth of footpaths.

Summer Flowers – Saturday

The hydrangea is a flower that perplexes me.  I am aware it blooms in different colours due to the level of PH in the soil (more alkaline, towards the blue end of the spectrum; more acid, the pink end – or is it the other way around?) but I am surprised by the number of hydrangea bushes that I see that have a full range of colours.  I just don’t understand how that can happen?

Oh, I am aware it is not a wild flower.  Work with me as I evade categories here.

Hydrangea at Work, July 2009.

And I never knew there were different types of hydrangea; although, I guess, I can extrapolate because there are different types of almost everything, so why not hydrangea?

Lace Hydrangea, London. August 2009.