Just how big or small is the world?

I guess this is all about personal perspectives but when you are a fly of some description or another your world is probably no bigger than 1Km square if that.  On a technical front the more I use the 90 mm Sony Macro lens (FE 90mm F2.8 Macro G OSS) I am even more impressed.   I had one or two issues with the lens to start off with but know it is turning out to be a real stunner.   The lens is on a Sony A600 and the performance from the sensor first rate – both of these images have been tightly cropped and yet the detail is very very good.

Of course the A6000 is a 2 model old camera which if you are to believe the hype about the latest cameras makes it really only suitable for dustbin. This goes to show the barrier camera manufacturers have hit when trying to sell their newer models which may be great if you are a budding video camera person but if you are like me a boring old still photographer more interested in landscape/nature then there really isn’t any reason to pay the extra £1000 for the latest model with all its 4K nonsense.   I am sure that the sensor might be a just a fraction better as well as the tracking autofocus – not one of the A6000’s best points – but it is certainly not worth all the extra money for a non professional camera. (For professional I am taking about working conditions rather than image quality)

 

BTW both of the insects captured here are no more than 1.5 cm in length.

 

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Summer evenings are here…

With warm summer evenings here I thought it would be nice to dig up an image from the archives …  see even Wales can at times look just like the Med!

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Paradoxical Mirror Gazing

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Many positive outcomes…

There was a time when I would do ten things before breakfast and not think anything of it…there was a time…  No more.   It has been almost ten years since I under went a significant life change and so I find myself in reflective mood.  Today, an old friend of mine joined me in the late 50’s club and I passed on my best wishes to him as we all do nowadays via Facebook. His reply has made me think about the last ten years – have I had as many positive outcomes as I could have over that time?

Well I am still here which of course is the most positive outcome of the lot.  I have made new friends and enjoyed a life over that period I had never even thought possible just a few months before my life changed.  My son has been very successful academically and appears to be happy with his life and wife.  There have been losses along the way and people I had made friends with have dropped out of my life which again is part of the rich tapestry of life.   Perhaps the most personal growth I have shown in the last ten years is that I now can draw and paint with a certain amount of skill and reward.  So almost ten years on I am in a good place, not very well off compared to some but far richer than most of the humans on this world.  I guess my old friend was right after all.

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Seep

Shakespeare walks into a bar and the landlord says

‘Oy Shakespeare your Bard’

That makes about as much sense as the American Gods series which is a slow burner but now I am hooked.

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Getting dry…

Another visit to the rather damp Hidcote Manor – the lighting conditions were near perfect with a flat light and plenty of rain drops.

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Bug’s LIfe

Biomass is such an ugly word but it does encapsulate just how much of the world we are not aware of even though it is right under our own noses whether it is the more obvious bee searching out pollen or the less obvious beetles doing just the same we live in a far more complicated world than any one person could ever comprehend.

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Too much of anything…

Every now and then all the hard work in the garden pays off.  If an Englishman’s home is his castle then what is the garden?

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I should be so lucky

So goodbye to the first heatwave of the year – it was far too hot for me and hello to more bearable weather.  I’m not sure I have moaned about weather forecasters on TV and radio who presume to know whether you will like the weather that is coming over the next 12 hours or so.   It seems not to be as pronounced as it once was but I also balk against anyone telling me what I will or won’t like – sometimes weather forecasters cross that line.

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Don’t ask me I’ll never

The heat is the destroyer of creativity – well at least that is my experience.

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