Chromagraph Photo Art Blog

 Burghley House & Gardens Photo Walk Burghley House, Stamford I don't these days Do photo walks as such. That is; a period of time spent with a camera exploring an area with no preconceived  plan, agenda, or menu of images to be made. Without intentionality, I find images most often lack the attributes  that define quality. However, some locations, such as the one today do overcome my reticence. Burghley House was the residence of England's first Chancellor, William Cecil, Lord Burghley and has played a part in many a TV costume drama. In real life, it was also the subject of a siege during the English Civil War of the 17th Century and has been a symbol of power for the last 600 years. I have visited the Gardens before, but on this occasion we had a rare opportunity to see the Private Gardens situated in a celebrated Capability Brown Landscape. Because I was also in convoy with my 92 year old mother and my Partner, I had to be decisive about what and where I made im...

Dung Fly  So, in my last post (sic) I talked about the difficulty of getting good, high quality macro images and I may have been rather gloomy about my prospects in the Nature Competition I entered in Wadebridge Photography Group this week. Well, I was surprised and delighted to find myself the winner in the PDI (Projected Digital Images) section of the competition in the face of some quite stiff competition, especially from Adrian Langdon whom I previously named as probably the best wildlife photographer in the County.  Tech stuff for the curious and the nerdy: Fujifilm XT-5 Zeiss Touit 50mm f/2.8 Macro Lens Single Image 1/125s @f/11 AK flash diffuser & Godox TT350f ISO 400 Location: Lanjeth Water Gardens So, a feather in the cap, but I need to go on refining and improving this techniques, particularly the AK flash diffuser. To that end, I've been working on my macro focus stacking in order to get quality results. For test purposes, I used seed heads which have developed...

  I've long been a fan of macro photography, but to date my attempts at this have been middling to poor. OK, some have been decent such as this image which actually made it into the Cornwall Wildlife Trust calendar for 2024.  Par Market Fungus OK, it's not really a macro image, but it IS focus stacked for increased depth of field and detail whilst still retaining an uncluttered background and I'm quite happy with it. Other trials have been less successful and whilst I have been able to turn out OK images of insects such as these ones of a Bumblebee and a Dung Fly below, they have not quite been of the stellar quality I have been aspiring to such as turned out by the Swedish Photographer Michael Widell and another teenage prodigy,   Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas who goes by the name of Naturefold on YouTube. Bumblebee at South Bosent farm Both these images have been submitted into the annual Nature competition of Wadebridge Photography Group, the club I joined this year. I...