Wings of the Red Kite

If I can just squeeze this in. It’s been a difficult week, I’ve been tired out but now coming back to myself. The subject ‘Wings’ was set by Beth of the Wandering Dawgs blog, who hosts the Lens-Artists Challenge #376.

The subject took me back a number of years to a visit to the red kite feeding station at Bellymack Hill Farm in the Galloway region. There every afternoon, food is put out and dozens of red kites appear for their daily.

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A Moth’s a Moth for a’ That

Lead Image – Burnet Moth : Nikon D7500; Sigma 105mm Macro Lens; f16; 1/320sec; ISO640.

I don’t really like moths. I always remember them seeming to fly straight towards me whenever they get in the house; I didn’t like that. Moths would eat holes in my grandparents’ clothing and wardrobes smelled of naphthalene to eradicate the problem. Nasty!

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Looking Up, Looking Down

The world looks a bit different depending on your viewpoint. In taking photographs I’ve always been encouraged to shoot from various angles as a slight change can substantially alter and perhaps improve the resulting photograph…. especially true when using a wide angle lens. And we know sometimes we should get down on our knees to take a photo, but then, for me, it seems to be getting harder to get back up again.

So for this challenge, I want to go for the extremes of Looking Up, and Looking Down, to show the effects of what you can capture at these angles and get a different perspective on our view of the world.

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Asymmetrical

Lens-Artist Challenge #274

Last week, I tried to cover symmetry and show some images that showed this reflection about an axis. Now I’ve been prompted By Donna at Wind Kisses blog to consider Asymmetry. Well, I know one thing is that such images shouldn’t be symmetrical but should despite that show some balance.

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Symmetry

Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #273

Symmetry – the quality of being made up of exactly similar parts facing each other across a line, a plane or around an axis.

Sofia of photographias blog challenges us to show images that illustrate symmetry …..and more than that those images which show how symmetry is “an important tool to compose strong and appealing photos”.

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Living on the Edge

(from Oct 2016)
Down on the rocks near Troon harbour, I looked for seabirds – anything at all. I could see eider ducks, oystercatchers, cormorants and gulls – plenty. Then looking back into the sunlight, I just spotted a little movement on the flat rocks. A family of four little Ringed Plovers were ‘coorying doon’ out of the wind behind a wee ridge.  The strong sun behind them wasn’t going to give me a good shot, so I moved in a great half circle round to get the light directly on to them.

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Butterfly Collecting

I’ve just been reading in the BBC History magazine about a wealthy lady of the 17th century, whose abusive and estranged husband successfully challenged her will following her decease. He claimed that she was not of sound mind when she left all her property to her cousin. Among the evidence he cited of her madness was that she was obsessed with the collection of butterflies and moths.

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Green and Blue

Nature’s colours

What with the blue of sky and green of leaves, blue and green are common acquaintances in nature. The view of my regular lockdown walk down the right hand side of the river (above) was taken on evening last week. But I looking through my archives and find some other examples of natural blues and greens.

Like this Common Blue butterfly. It’s not long emerged from its chrysalis and is sitting here upside down on a reed stem taking in the heat of the morning sun.

A small butterfly but the male is so blue and when you see them fluttering by you feel there’s something magical happening.

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Orange Tip Butterflies

We saw a small white butterfly land in our garden. Very early in our year to see any butterfly, especially as the weather is unusually cold. And then the butterfly disappeared from sight. Where did it go?

Our daffodils and narcissi have been great this year. They flowered for a long time and now are looking a bit past it. All the petals are wilting. But look closely!

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