A Meander Around Cliveden, 7th June 2007

One camera (EOS 10D), one lens (100mm macro), one tripod. OK let's add in a little honesty here. I carried shed loads of other gear but only bothered to use these items. An unusually early start at work enabled and even more unusual early finish, and I rushed to Cliveden to geth through the gates before 5.30pm.

It wasn't sunny, but it was bright and dry. It seems that early June 2007 has been plagued by moderate breezes. Hardly worth complaining about, but for macro work it can be a bit of a pain.

Anyway, a bag full of gear with a tripod strapped to it had attracted the usual interest from NT staff. Sometimes this is blatant 'following', ending with a fiendly 'what are you up to then?', and on this occassion it was some bloke in a shirt and tie looking quite out of place a couple of hundred yards behind me in the Long Garden. As I neared the pigeon thing adjacent to the main house he appeared to lose interest, and I eventually found something worthy of a snap.

As I began to set up my tripod by a strange architectural bloom, a trio of enthusiastic retirees proceeded to explain that the alliums were at least twice as big at Sissinghurst. 'Oh right,' I replied, 'I was particularly struck by the unusual flower heads. Whereabouts is Sissinghurst?'. 'In Kent' they replied, almost as one. Fearing it might get dark before I got there, I proceeded to attach my camera to the tripod.

With a macro lens already attached, these berries or grapes etc. etc. were begging to be photographed. Unfortunately (on closer inspection) good examples were a little hard to find, but I did find this little row of three purple ones, and allowed enough depth of field to keep them resonably sharp. I tried to keep the row parallel to the lens to ensure it was all in focus. I then walked along the edge of the main lawn overlooked by the restaurant etc., where Cliveden have now helpfully pointed out that picnics and ballgames are not wanted. Reaching the Chapel I turned right and spent nearly ten minutes wathcing a young fox on the path below. It was aware of my presence but continued to lie down, stand up, sniff around the detritus, eventually disappearing off down towards the river.

Proceeding along the path I reached the memorial garden created in remembrance of the various soldiers who I think were treated but subsequently died at the nearby Canadian hospital. This has recently been replaced with very expensive retirement flats. The small garden is very tranquil and even in the height of summer receives very few visitors. On one of the walls I found some snail shells and moved them around a bit. The tripod aided composition and offered greater flexibility in terms of aperture/depth of field.

Whilst looking at the shells I was persistently bothered by greenfly. One unfortunate soul chose to walk along the wall, where it was easy pickings for an ant. I attempted the macro equivalent of panning with the movement of the ant. I did well to depress the shutter predicting where the ant would be, but sadly my shutter speed was not fast enough to freeze the nippy little blighter.

I quickly found another snail shell, and experimented with different apertures. Here, a narrow depth of field has worked ok.

I returned to my favourite haunt in the grounds, the water garden. At one edge of the pond a beech tree with recently emerged leaves was pleasantly backlit. I went in close to see what I could get.

Assessing the images on the screen I reflected upon a comment made by a visiting speaker this season. It went along the lines of using a cropped part of image for natural history photography, particularly if the image was digitally projected. In some circles this was seen as dishonest. Anyway, I had just applied a little sharpening to an image and realised it was quite crisp. It was a very similar shot to the leaf photo you see above. So, I used editing software to zoom in a bit and see what the shot looked like a little closer. I have inserted the shot, below. I make no bones about this. Any photographer will surely compose/shoot/crop etc. according to the final display medium. The uppermost snailshell image on this webpage is extensively cropped!

You can judge the amount of cropping by looking at the two thumbnails at the top of this page. Of course, I had to clone out the leaf at the top right hand corner. I ended the evening with a shot of new growth at the very edge of the pond. In a bold display of natural history ignorance, I have titled this shot 'Prickly'.

With the shot in the bag it was time to return home and see if anyone had added images to the second summer walk page. They had. Happy day.

-- MikeKiely - 08 Jun 2007