Nature

grass

After the portrait module I’m back on home turf with ‘Nature’ today in Ben Hawkins’ Complete Beginner’s Photography Course.

He suggests getting up at dawn for a dew-fresh close-up of grass blades but yesterday, as the late afternoon sun backlit a patch of our front lawn, I went for his alternative suggestion of adding the ‘dew’ with a fine-rose watering can.

florist's daisy

My usual approach to flower photography is to snap away and hope for the best, so it was interesting to try his more considered approach, using a tripod and setting up the shot with a bit of extra care.

Remote Control

Olympus remote control on the iPad

This is where the ability to remote control my Olympus DSLR with an iPad proved useful (you can also use a smart phone). It enables you to control aperture, shutter speed, ISO ‘film speed’ and focus without crouching down to look at the subject via the camera’s viewfinder or flip-up screen.

Leaf Veins

leaf veins

The final challenge was to photograph a backlit leaf. My Huion light pad wasn’t bright enough so I sprayed the leaf with water and stuck it to the studio window.

leaf on window

The whole beginner’s course is designed for a digital camera with an general purpose ‘kit lens’. Mine zooms from 14-42mm, which in traditional 35mm cameras that would be 28-84mm: ranging from a wide-angle (28mm) that doesn’t distort perspective too much to a short telephoto (84mm) that is useful for portraits.

When I bought the camera it also came with a dedicated macro lens and a modest telephoto zoom (80mm to 300mm in traditional 35mm terms) so I’m impressed at how well the everyday kit lens has performed as a macro lens on the leaf.

Cat’s-ear

Cat’s-ear, Hypochaeris radicata, flowering and going to seed on the front lawn, which I left untrimmed during ‘No Mow May’ but which is now due for strimming.

The Border in June

The flower border in June: buttercup seed-head, cornflower, lady’s mantle, marigold, lavender, salvia, annual meadow-grass, seed-pod (lupin?), white clover and red clover.

These are taken on my newly-repaired Olympus OM-D E-M10 II using the 60mm macro lens. Good to have it back. I could have taken very similar photographs on my iPhone but the digital SLR camera gives me more control.

A Leggy Pelargonium

pelargonium

We’ve had this pelargonium for more than a year, so it’s not surprising that its now looking leggy undernourished, but the leaf-scarred stems make it more interesting to draw.

Drawn in Procreate with the ‘Technical Pen’, a plain no-nonsense virtual pen.

Alliums

alium

75℉ 27℃, front garden: The tall alliums are attracting small to medium-sized bumblebees.

Moth Orchid

Our Phalaenopsis orchid, also known as the moth orchid, is doing well on the kitchen windowsill. It probably appreciates the sometimes steamy atmosphere. We’ve kept it in the transparent plastic pot it came in as it’s important for the roots to be exposed to light, although the transparent pot is inside a plant holder, so it doesn’t get the full sun.

Pelargonium

Pelargonium

After a year, our zonal pelargonium is beginning to look a bit leggy.

Drawn in Procreate on the iPad using the Tinderbox virtual pen from the Inking section. Having got through all three of my PenTips 2 soft Apple Pencil tips, I’m now back to a plain Apple Pencil tip but the canvas texture of the PenTips Magnetic Matte Screenprotector is working well for me, an improvement on drawing on the iPad’s glass screen.

Stitched Up

I struggled to identify this flower, photographed with my iPhone as we walked around Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s Idle Valley reserve a couple of weeks ago. I think what’s happened is that greater stitchwort flowers are growing up amongst the foliage of some kind of cranesbill.

It was drawn in Procreate on the iPad but if I’d been drawing from the actual plant in my sketchbook I might have realised that they’d got mixed up.

Unless you can suggest the identity of a plant with stitchwort-type flowers and cranesbill-style leaves?