Spring has sprung

It’s nearly May, and here in leafy Worcester everything wild is going at a very rapid pace.  The birds are singing like mad, and creatures like toads are well out of hibernation.

I found this one perched on top of an old tree stump in the garden.  The stump is covered by our wheelbarrow – upside down – and I’ve seen a toad on the tree stump before.  I had my OM System 40-150 Pro lens fitted, which was perfect for an informal portrait.  The eyes are good and sharp, which is an important thing in portrait photography.

I’ve been experimenting with capturing small insects in flight. It’s really hard with things like this hoverfly, as they as so fast and so random.  I used my 40-150 lens with the 1.4x converter to make the insect as big as possible in the frame – but it was still pretty small.  I set a focus limit of 0.7m to 2m on my OM-1 in order to get my focus hit rate up.  With no focus limit the camera focuses on the background instead of the insect.

I’ve now got the OM System 90mm macro lens, and it’s fun working out the best way to use it.  The handling is quite different to the 60mm macro lens.  You need to take a bit more time than with the 60mm.

I found a dandelion head and concentrated on just one seed “parachute” or “pappus”.  The sun was almost behind the parachute and there is some fabulous diffraction going on, giving lovely spectral colours.

Spring’s great!