The point of this post is a bit different from the past few.  It's no award winning image, but I want to talk about the different aspects of the image and how it was taken...

So, the majority of the Bluebells are out at the reservoir and I walked down there yesterday afternoon to photograph the flowers.  I took this image when I saw these three bluebells lined up at different stages of their growth.  

Camera Settings:
- Nikon D7100 with 105mm F/2.8 Macro.
- Manfrotto tripod with vanguard ball head, set up roughly a metre from the subject.  
- Yongnuo YN-467ii with RF-602 transmitter/receiver. 
- Trigger release for the camera.

 - F/16 - 1/13th @ ISO-100
 - Single flash off-set to the left around 40cm from the subject, with inbuilt reflector to spread the light across the scene.

Lighting:
So the whole point to me writing this blog, is that this wasn't taken how I would usually have photographed it.  I started out trying the natural light, you can see two images below which I will talk about now.  

So the image below, to the left is the natural light shot, exposed for the bluebell. Now usually I would be okay with this image and in post-production I would save the highlights/lower shadows etc, but instead I chose to play around with the lighting and get it close to the correct exposure in camera.  From this first image I could see where the natural light was hitting, but just in case you can't I underexposed by a couple of stops and have increased the highlights/darkened shadows to accentuate how the sun was lighting the scene (image on the right).  The result shows the brightest part of the image (red area) and which parts of the immediate surrounding of the subject are lit (blue areas).  From seeing this I knew what exposure to use for the background, what power to have my flash at and where to position it.

I held exposed for the leaves in the background to look their best and then chose an aperture which would give a depth of field in which most of the scene was in focus.  I then used my flash at full power with it's in built reflector to light the bluebell and surrounding area.  The one problem that I ran into was the light from the sun on the moss, along with the flash made it a fair bit too bright.  As this was the only problem, I chose to fix this in post. 

I hope you all liked this post and maybe it gave you a little insight into the lighting that you can use for flower photography.  At university and from other blogs I have read, I am often told to use reflectors and for me, when I was out and didn't have any reflectors, I wouldn't get the photograph I wanted.  So, now I carry a flash with me instead of reflectors, maybe you spend a little more on batteries but it's much more flexible and I don't think I could've done this shot with a reflector(s).

Thanks for reading, any likes, shares and comments are really appreciated!

You can follow my work closer on Facebook by clicking on this link --> AlexGreenePhotography

The first stop on our trip was Botallack mines.  We headed here first for the landscapes and flower and then finished the trip photographing the sunset at Land's End.  You may recognise the mines as the setting for some of the new (remade) T.V. show 'Poldark'.  The problem with doing a couple of locations in a day, is that you have to be at one of them at mid-day, meaning that you have to photograph in the harsh sunlight - of course though it is still nice to visit the location and you can get some really nice shots.  I would like to return to Botallack and sunset to photograph this same landscape again.  In a couple of weeks it may be better though, as that is when the flowers will be in full bloom.  In the picture above, you can see Sea Campion (Silene uniflora) and Thrift (Armeria maritima).  If I was to take this again, I would go slightly lower down the slope and have more of the flowers in the frame than in this shot - although I do also like the waves around the rocks in the lower left corner.  

I think that this post would be too long to have as a single post and so I am splitting it into two parts, this is the end of part 1, but I will be posting images over on Facebook (click here - Alex Greene Natural History Photography) for the next few days and then I will return to write part 2...

Thanks for reading, I hope you like the pictures and I encourage you to get down to see these wonderful landscapes if you get the chance. 

 As it is nearly all over Cornwall, Gorse is prominent around the reservoir and I looked lovely as the sun was setting.  Therefore I decided to set up by the Gorse and wait in hope for something to land.  Luckily this Robin did!  After just over half an hour waiting, this robin sat very close to me and sang away.  After I had fired off a few shots that I knew were sharp and properly exposed, I started to film - which if you've ever tried it, is fairly difficult on a monopod!  I used a fence to lean the top of the monopod onto and then supported the bottom with my foot.  This worked fairly well and here's a short piece of footage of the Robin cleaning its beak and then eating a midge that was flying past.

I went on a walk yesterday evening through College Reservoir.  It has been a while since I last visited the lake and so I wanted to see if anything much had changed, since it is my habitat project and I now have two weeks to document the changes that we have seen since Spring started.  Although I wasn't expecting to get many photographs, I still lugged around any equipment that could come in handy!  The main camera that I had over my shoulder was my Nikon D7100 and thanks to 'Rosie Dutton Photography' (follow the link to find her Facebook page),  a 600mm F/4 - this was mounted on my Manfrotto 680B monopod.  Once we reached the end of the path around the lake, the other carried on walking over to Argal Reservoir but I decided to stay back and try to get some images of the wildlife I had just spotted.  There was actually quite a lot around; rabbits were emerging into the fields, I saw my first Swallows of the year soaring over the fields surrounding the lake, a couple of Buzzards and a whole collection of small song birds - including the Robin above, but I will come to that in a minute.

Once I had got this shot, the sun went behind some trees and so I ran over to Argal (which has less tree cover) to get any photographs in the last of the evening light.  There is a bridge across the dam at Argal and at the end of the day Pied Wagtail sit on the walls of this dam.  I walked past them and then turned back to get them in the best light.  I used an aperture of F/4 as this one was running around, so I needed a quick shutter speed to freeze the motion.  Some movement has been maintained in the legs and so overall I am really happy with how this turned out.

Just shows that we need to get out and explore more!  And always have a camera by your side, it helps if you have a 600mm attached too :P

Any likes, shares and comments are much appreciated!

Me and 'Stephanie Foote Photography' took a fairly quick stop at Truro Cathedral on the way to Tehidy Country Park yesterday to photograph the fantastic architecture. I had this shot planned for when we arrived, it is a stitch of around 7 images.  The problem with this cathedral is that it wasn't built straight, this means that you cant get a symmetrical shot (like the one to the right) from the very back of the cathedral.  In a way this worked quite well for me as the vertical panorama allowed me to get the best parts of the of the building into the frame, without any unwanted details.  The seating in the cathedral was not what I was expecting at all.  Roughly the first 10 rows of seating were small plastic seats, like the type we all used to sit on at primary school, so I decided to cut these out of the frame.

We actually only got around half an hour to photograph because of an unexpected ordeal to get a permit.  It turns out that you need a permit if you are going to use a tripod inside the Cathedral, so bear that in mind if you are planning on doing anything like this.  It cost a fiver to get the permit and by the time we were done with that, we didn't have as long of we wanted to photograph.  Another thing to take into account if you go here is that you cannot take any images if there is a service, you can't use flash and you cant go to any parts where there is currently a private service taking place.  To the bottom right of the image, there was a small chapel which had a christening happening and so we couldn't go over to that area of the building.

Here's another image from the morning.  Actually, this is the first image that I took.  The hardest part of this was finding the very centre on the floor and as you can see from the slight difference between the upper triangles on the very left and right and the lower ones.  However I don't think anybody would actually notice this, as most people aren't as picky as me!  So what is probably the first thing we do when we walk into a building like this... look up!  And I found myself doing exactly that, therefore I decided to take this photograph. With some slight cropping and perspective warping I have got it as close to symmetrical as I think I possibly could. 

Hope you like the images and feel free to share the post!