At last… a sea spider!

You can’t beat a good rockpooling session. Last summer I couldn’t believe my luck when I discovered a sea spider whilst exploring the Dorset coastline. With a leg span of around 2cm I was pleased I hadn’t overlooked it. This a creature that attained almost mythical status for me as a child. I would look longingly at images of these fascinating invertebrates in marine wildlife books, always hoping I would eventually discover one.

Also known as as pycnogonids, sea spiders are not spiders at all but marine arthropods. I am prettysure that this is Ammothea hilgendorfi. This species was first observed in the UK in 1978 in Southampton Water and is thought to have been introduced from Japan. However I will seek expert advice to get the ID verified as I can’t claim to be an expert on sea spiders. A map of UK records can be seen here: https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000179052

This individual was found at low tide amongst some submerged rocks. I photographed it in a small flash setup that I had brought with me for documenting rockpool creatures, basically a glass dish for backlighting and a white perspex tray for white background cutout shots. The sea spider was photographed on location and returned to exactly the spot it was discovered. Despite not having much time I was able to capture a few simple portraits of it. In hindsight I wish I had gone beyond these rather straight forward ‘record’ shots, however I am more than happy to have got something usable. Maybe next time (if there is a next time) I will be able to try some more imaginative. I dearly wish I had had my MP-E 65mm with me, I could just about make out the eyes with the 100mm macro lens…

 

 

My photographic adventures in 2015

I have been very busy with my camera over the past 12 months. My last blog post was in February, so there’s plenty to tell you about. Danger: if you find insects, spiders or photography boring, stop reading now.

Winter in Scotland

During the winter months in the UK I certainly miss my insect friends, but always look forward to getting up to Scotland for some frozen landscapes. Early this year I spent time on Skye and in the Cairngorms, immersing myself in the winter scenery. I met up with friend and fellow photographer James Shooter for a few days and enjoyed some wonderful encounters with red deer and mountain hares. Thanks for sharing some great locations with me James!

Mountain Hare (Lepus timidus) in heavy snowfall, Cairngorms National Park, Scotland. January.

Spring at Last

The arrival of spring meant it was time to head out in search of invertebrates. I live at the edge of the Peak District in Derbyshire and have several local sites that I regularly visit to hopefully catch a glimpse of a particular invertebrate or plant species. On one of the first properly warm and sunny days of April, I headed out to a thicket of goat willow that I hoped would be covered in yellow catkins. The catkins are an important food source for pollinators at this time of the year when not much else is in flower. Sure enough, I was rewarded with a dozen or so peacock butterflies that seemed as pleased as me to welcome the spring.

Peacock Butterfly (Inachis io) feeding on Goat Willow catkins (Salix caprea), an important food source for pollinators in early spring. Peak District National Park, UK. April.

In Search of the Obscure

Throughout the rest of the year I enjoyed many more outings in the UK, several with my pal Chris Mattison. Chris and I very often end up photographing natural history subjects that are by many peoples’ standards small and obscure, such as tiny details of lichens. Working with macro subjects can be fiddly and often take a long time to set up for, shuffling the camera backwards and forwards with a macro focusing rail to get the composition just right and maybe adding a bit of light from an off-camera flash. Seeing the camera gear setup, passers-by will sometimes come up and ask, ‘what are you photographing, a bird?’ and look rather perplexed when the answer comes back, ‘see here, this section of decaying leaf, the veins make an interesting pattern’.

I have spent ages working with tiny organisms in my garden pond this year. Much of this work was done using my trusty Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens. Whilst not big, my garden pond remains a source of inspiration for most of the year, it is home to so many fascinating creatures.

Decaying Sessile Oak leaf {Quercus petraea} from the woodland floor, backlit with flash to reveal leaf veins. Peak District National Park, Derbyshire, UK. December.

Volvox aureus, a Chlorophyte or green alga, in pond water. UK. The larger spheres are approximately 0.5mm in diameter. Digital composite image.

Isle of Mull Tour

In June I ran a photography workshop week on the Isle of Mull with my friend Nick Garbutt. We had a really enthusiastic group and some very memorable puffin encounters, as well as plenty of time to explore macro photography. At present there are still a few places left on the June 2016 tour here: >>click link.

More UK Photography

I wish I could tell you about all of the subjects I found in the UK this year, but one of my favourites was this beautiful female raft spider in Dorset:

Raft Spider {Dolomedes fimbriatus} female on heathland pool. Note wing of predated damselfly floating on water’s surface under the spider. Dorset, UK. August.

The Peak District Photography Gallery

I am lucky enough to be a member of the Peak District Photography Gallery, along with four other local photographers who are all good friends. Our gallery is situated in Bakewell and gives us a chance to display (and hopefully sell!) our Peak District landscape and wildlife photographs. We regularly put on themed exhibitions and early this year we worked on a fascinating joint project at Haddon Hall. Our aim was to recapture exact viewpoints that had originally been recorded over 150 years ago by Samuel Rayner in exquisitely detailed lithographs and drawings. Not my normal style of photography and all the more enjoyable for it!

Notice Nature Feel Joy

A real highlight of the year for me was being commissioned by Derby Museums to photograph their impressive historical insect collection in connection with the launch of their new nature gallery ‘Notice Nature Feel Joy’. I was tasked with photographing several specimens for their information booklets as well as producing a number of interesting abstracts for use in various other designs. If you are in the Derby area do drop in to explore this inspiring and interactive natural history gallery: http://www.derbymuseums.org/other-galleries/

Here are some close-ups of insects from the collection:

Slovenia, Croatia and Austria

I had never been to Slovenia before, and greatly enjoyed photographing the alpine flowers on the limestone scree slopes. The meadows were full of critters and the mountain walking was excellent. This was actually a family holiday rather than a ‘work trip’, but as usual I sneaked my camera into the luggage…

Sheetweb Weaving Spider {Linyphiidae} in web at sunset. The silk is refracting the light into a rainbow of coloured bands. Slovenia, July.

I ran my first tour for Wildlife Worldwide in June to Austria, once again teaming up with Nick Garbutt. The tour is called ‘Close-up on Alpine Nature’ and is all about mastering macro photography out in the field, including topics such as off-camera flash and focus stacking. At this time of the year the alpine meadows are bursting with flowers and insects. I was really pleased with how the tour went and it was gratifying to get off to a strong start with Wildlife Worldwide. 2017 dates are up on my website: >>see here. Special thanks to Andreas, Marlies and family who looked after us so well in their fantastic alpine hotel.

I visited Croatia twice with my friend Ian Daisley, both times concentrating on Plitvice Lakes National Park. The scenery is jaw-dropping and there were plenty of smaller details to explore as well including some fascinating cave invertebrates.

Thank you Crane Fly

I was very honoured to win the Hidden Britain category in the 2015 British Wildlife Photography Awards with my image of a dew-covered crane fly. I also had three highly commended images. I am still very excited about the whole thing, even though it was a while ago now!

Crane Fly / Daddy Long Legs {Tipula paludosa} female covered in morning dew. Peak DIstrict National Park, Derbyshire, UK. September. Winner of the HIDDEN BRITAIN category in the 2015 British Wildlife Photography Awards.

House Spider female {Tegenaria sp.} in garden shed. Derbyshire, UK, March. Highly Commended in the URBAN WILDLIFE category of the 2015 British Wildlife Photography Awards.

Red Deer herd {Cervus elaphus} moving over mountain ridge in heavy snow. Cairngorms National Park, Scotland. January. Highly Commended in the HABITAT category of the 2015 British Wildlife Photography Awards.

Round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia). Isle of Mull, Scotland. June. Highly Commended in the BOTANICAL BRITAIN category of the 2015 British Wildlife Photography Awards.

My apologies to those I have worked with but not had the space to mention in this year’s review. Thank you for reading and I wish you all a happy and productive 2016.

Croatia – Plitvice Lakes National Park

February 13th, 2015

Recently I travelled to Croatia to photograph the amazing Plitvice Lakes National Park. I was joined by good friend and fellow photographer Ian Daisley who had first suggested the trip a couple of years back. Ian’s vivid description of turquoise lakes nestled in deep limestone gorges sounded very tempting and it was great to finally find the time to make a visit.

Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia

Being January we had hoped for frozen waterfalls and snow-covered trees, but it was a bit too warm for that. Despite this the turquoise waters made for a striking contrast against the muted greys and browns of the winter scenery.

European Chubb {Squalius / Leuciscus cephalus}

The clarity of the lakes allowed for some interesting views of huge shoals of chubb, seen here gathered at the entrance of a flooded cave. I lit the fish in this shot from the side with a single off-camera flashgun. Thanks for holding the flash Ian!

Turkeytail fungus (Trametes / Coriolus versicolor)

When the rain closed in the beech woods offered some shelter and also plenty of inspiring subjects such as this vibrant turkey tail fungus. The damp conditions made the fungus, mosses and lichens all the more colourful.

Supljara Cave, Plitvice Lakes National Park

Another great way of getting out of the rain was to explore some of the stunning limestone caves in the area. Upon closer inspection, I was intrigued to find the cave walls teaming with troglophilic invertebrates, adapted to living in the pitch black conditions…

Cave Cricket female (Troglophilus cavicola)

European Cave Spider (Meta menardi)

The abundance of large cave spiders (Meta menardi) might not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but I was in heaven! I was particularly pleased to have a chance to photograph their silken egg sacs, about the size of a Malteser, hanging from the roof of the cave.

Egg sac of European Cave Spider (Meta menardi)

To backlight the egg sac I used an off-camera flash (Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT) controlled via a radio trigger (Canon ST-E3-RT). I love this flexible and reliable setup and use it for many of my macro subjects.

Canon radio-triggered off-camera flash system, shown here with the MP-E 65mm macro lens.

I had many more compositions developing in my mind but had to return home early after just two days of photography due to an eye injury (unpleasant but all better now!). I must return one day to continue exploring this amazing place.

All images and text copyright Alex Hyde – www.alexhyde.co.uk

Peak District Orchids

August 16th, 2014

It’s been a fantastic summer for wild flowers in the Peak District (UK), I don’t ever remember seeing so many orchids! Of particular note were the Bee Orchids (Ophyris apifera), which flowered in incredible numbers in some sites and were far taller than in previous years.

Bee Orchids {Ophyris apifera} Peak District National Park, Derbyshire, UK. June.

Perhaps they were helped by the mild winter we had, but whatever the cause of the orchid boom this year it has been a real delight to spend long summer days in the meadows working with these most delicate of subjects.

Common Spotted Orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii} and Bee Orchid {Ophyris apifera} photographed with fisheye lens to show lowland calcareous grassland habitat. Peak District National Park, Derbyshire, UK. June.

Above is a habitat shot (captured with my Canon 8-15mm fisheye lens @ 15mm) to show the context the orchids grow in. Such pictures aren’t always composed to be pretty in their own right, but rather to help tell a story as part of a bigger picture set. I could spend all day exploring just these few square metres of meadow, it is heaving with beautiful macro subjects!

Pyramidal Orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis) Peak District National Park, Derbyshire, UK. July.

I like working at high magnification to show the intricate structures of the orchids, such as this pale form of a Pyramidal Orchid above. Here I have used a Canon 100mm macro lens with a very wide aperture to send the background out of focus. Another technique that I enjoy is commonly referred to as ‘field studio’ work. In this instance, it involves me putting a piece of white card a couple of feet behind the orchid growing in a meadow and blasting the card to pure white with an off camera flash gun. If I take several such photographs I can easily create a composite later in Photoshop.

Bee Orchids {Ophyris apifera} photographed against a white background in mobile field studio. Peak District National Park, Derbyshire, UK. June. Digital composite.

The creative possibilities with subjects as elegant as orchids are endless and by the end of each summer I am left full of ideas to try the following year. Fingers crossed next year’s display will be as amazing!

All images and text copyright Alex Hyde – www.alexhyde.co.uk

A Dedicated Mother

August 12th, 2014

Over the past few years I have been documenting the lifecycle of the Nursery Web Spider (Pisaura mirabilis), which can be found in good numbers in Derbyshire where I live.

Nursery Web Spider {Pisaura mirabilis} female carrying egg sac, photographed against a white background in mobile field studio. Peak District National Park, Derbyshire, UK.

The female goes to extreme lengths to ensure her offspring are protected, right from the moment they are laid as eggs. Mothers can be seen running through the long grass carrying their large spherical egg sac with their jaws and pedipalps. When the eggs are near to hatching, she builds a silk tent using plant stems for support and takes up residence inside.

Nursery Web Spider {Pisaura mirabilis} mother in nursery web in meadow, with the spherical egg mass that she is guarding visible. Peak District National Park, Derbyshire. UK.

Once the egg sac hatches the mother stands guard over her babies, patrolling the outside of the nursery web.

Nursery Web Spider {Pisaura mirabilis} mother on nursery web with newly emerged spiderlings. Peak District National Park, Derbyshire. UK.

Only once all the spiderlings have dispersed will she move on. For me this is one of the sights of the summer and I have spent many happy hours photographing these fascinating spiders.

Notes on Photography:

All of these images were captured with a Canon 5d Mk III and 100mm macro lens. I use a tripod with no centre column (Gitzo Systematic Series) so that I can get the camera low to the ground.

All images and text copyright Alex Hyde – www.alexhyde.co.uk

 

Beauty is a matter of… magnification

January 27th, 2014

The recent weather in the Peak District has been less than inspiring, so I have found myself searching for some interesting indoor subjects to photograph. Look no further than that mouldy cherry tomato hiding at the back of the punnet!

Pin mould {Mucor sp.} growing on a damaged tomato,

It looks pretty horrible to me, but let’s try going in a little closer…

Pin mould {Mucor sp.} growing on a damaged tomato, showing fruiting bodies (sporangia) – CLICK TO ZOOM

…beautiful! Working at high magnification with the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens reveals a fasicnating world of delicate pin mould {Mucor sp.} fruiting bodies, known as sporangia.

Pin mould {Mucor sp.} growing on a damaged tomato, showing fruiting bodies (sporangia).

The tomato provided me with a striking red background for a final composition. This scene was only about 5mm high in real life. Please note, to my knowledge this was the only piece of decomposing fruit and veg in my kitchen!

All images and text copyright Alex Hyde – www.alexhyde.co.uk

Tiny Woodland Subjects

December 3rd, 2013

Despite the cold weather, there are still plenty of exciting macro subjects about. I recently discovered a series of tiny orange slime mould fruiting bodies on a piece of rotting wood:

CLICK TO ENLARGE – Slime Mould {Trichia decipiens} fruiting bodies on decaying wood next to pencil lead for scale.

Going in closer, we start to reveal the details of these delicate, transient structures. Click to enlarge the image below.

CLICK TO ENLARGE – Slime Mould {Trichia decipiens} fruiting bodies on decaying wood.

Another tiny subject that can be found on rotting wood is the Globular Springtail {Sminthurus viridis}. I photographed this one a few hours ago. It was about 1.5mm in length and on the move for most of the time… a tricky customer, but great fun to work with nevertheless! I hope to do more work with these little fellows soon.

CLICK TO ENLARGE – A male globular springtail {Dicyrtomina saundersi} on decaying wood.

For those of you interested, all of these images were made using the Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens.

All images and text copyright Alex Hyde – www.alexhyde.co.uk

Mushroom Magic

October 27th, 2013

Every autumn I allow myself to indulge in a bit of fungus photography. I love taking my time over the pictures, which is a pleasant contrast to some of my fast-paced insect photography. Over the years I have tried all sorts of different compositions with fungi, from clean, simple images isolating a single fruiting body with a long lens to wide angle habitat shots.

Wide angle shot of Parasol Mushrooms (Lepiota procera)

Recently I have been trying something a bit different. Often working at high magnification, I have been trying to produce a set of abstracts showing off the beautiful colours and patterns that fungi display. Some of the images below were done with flash, some with natural light. The first image below has been backlit with a flash, revealing a beautiful spectrum of colours.

Backlit gills of a Brittlegill {Russula sp.}

Gills of Honey Waxcap {Hygrocybe coccinea}

Turkeytail fungus {Trametes / Coriolus versicolor}

Lemon Disco fungus {Bisporella citrina}

This is more a personal project than anything else and I hope to fit in more over the next few weeks.

All images and text copyright Alex Hyde – www.alexhyde.co.uk

Strange Looks at the Cafe

I am always amazed at the places photo opportunities present themselves. Recently I was enjoying a cream tea outside a cafe. As I watched the inevitable cloud of wasps descend on the strawberry jam, I had an idea…

Common Wasps {Vespula vulgaris} feeding on a pot of jam – a great opportunity

As is often the case, I had my basic macro setup with me (100mm macro lens, flash, off-camera lead, diffuser). With some carefully aimed flash, the plate in the background was transformed into a perfect white background for a cutout shot. My friend Tom kindly provided the photo below, should you be interested to see my rather basic lighting setup.

Waiting for the wasps to pose.

One of the challenges of insect photography is concentrating on getting your subject in focus whilst ignoring the whispered comments from bemused onlookers.

Images and text copyright Alex Hyde or Tom Hartman (second image) – www.alexhyde.co.uk

Rockpool Macro Photography

September 11th, 2013

I live in Derbyshire which has no coastline, so I always get excited when I visit the seaside. A couple of hours exploring rockpools at low tide always turns up some exciting macro photography opportunities, and in this post I am going to look at some of the techniques I use.

Tidal pool, Carsaig, Isle of Mull, Scotland, UK. June.

Using Natural Light

The sea anemones below were photographed using natural light with a Canon 100mm macro lens. The exposure time was 0.4 seconds at f16, ISO 500 so a tripod was essential.

Beadlet Anemones {Actinia equina} in rock pool at low tide. Iona, Isle of Mull, Scotland, UK. June. – Canon 100mm macro lens

Now look at the photo below. We can see an obvious problem that any rockpool photographer will face – surface reflections. To eliminate these, try crouching directly over the rock pool to block out the reflection of the sky. If you find this difficult, a small black umbrella can be very useful. I keep a collapsable one in my camera bag for such occasions.

Reflections can cause big problems!

A polarizing filter can also remove or reduce surface reflections, but won’t always work depending on the angle you are working at. Still, it is well worth trying.

Using Flash

Flash allows us to freeze movement which can be very handy during a rockpool photography session. When using natural light, you may well end up with shutter speeds as slow as one second, and if during this time the wind ripples the surface of the rockpool or your subject moves, your shot could be ruined. With patience, it’s obviously possible to get great results with natural light, but flash can make life much easier.

Many people fear that flash will make their images look unnatural and harsh. This can certainly be the case, but needn’t be if a diffuser and an off-camera flash lead are used.

An off-camera flash lead and a flash diffuser allow you to create softer lighting in your macro flash photography.

For the shot of the blenny below, I used a single Canon 580EX II fitted with a diffuser. The diffuser has a larger surface area than the flash head, allowing the light to wrap round the subject, creating softer shadows. Using the off camera lead, I was able to position the flash to the side at such an angle that there were no surface reflections off the water. As a final trick, I placed a small piece of silver foil just out of frame to reflect light from the flash back into the composition and further soften the shadows. The soft light was important here as I wanted to show off the excellent camouflage this fish has and a harsh shadow would have outlined it instead. You can see more of my animal camouflage images here: CAMOUFLAGE GALLERY

Common Blenny {Lipophrys / Blennius pholis} camouflaged in rockpool. Isle of Mull, Scotland. – Canon 100mm Macro Lens, 580 EX II flash with diffuser

Here is a hermit crab photographed in exactly the same way.

Common Hermit Crab {Pagurus bernhardus} in a rockpool, withdrawing into shell for protection. Isle of Skye. – Canon 100mm macro lens, 580 EX II flash with diffuser

These fish eggs are tiny, just a few millimetres across so the Canon MP-E 65mm was used to get good magnification.

Eggs of Common Blenny / Shanny {Lipophrys pholis}. Isle of Mull, Inner Hebrides, Scotland, UK. Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens, 580 EX II flash with diffuser

Field Studio

Field studio in this instance means a pyrex dish supported a couple of feet above some black fabric, not exactly a Rolls-Royce setup but it works. I positioned two Canon 580EXII flash guns underneath this setup to backlight subject. Whilst light fall off and positioning of the flash guns help give a dark background, I find that a piece of dark velvety fabric ensures a true black is achieved.

Common Prawn (Leander serratus) photographed in mobile field studio. Isle of Mull, Scotland, UK. Canon 100mm macro lens, with two Canon 580 EX II flash units controlled via Pocket Wizard radio triggers.

If you buy a small aquarium net from a pet shop you should be able to catch a variety of rockpool creatures that you can photograph in a field studio like this. To minimise stress for any subjects you want to photograph, get your lighting setup worked out first, then introduce your creature. Make sure you use clean seawater, as if there is lots of disturbed sediment floating around in it, your photographs will look very speckled. I sometimes filter the water through a piece of muslin.

Let’s have a closer look at that prawn:

Common Prawn (Leander serratus) close up showing reflecting superposition compound eyes. Photographed in mobile field studio. Isle of Mull, Scotland, UK. Canon MP-E 65mm, lit with two 580 EX II flash guns controlled via Pocket Wizard radio triggers.

This close up was done using the Canon MP-E 65mm. The subject to camera distance here is very small, just a few centimetres. Care must be taken not to accidentally submerge the front of the lens in the water. The solution is not to overfill the pyrex dish!

Here is a final rockpool field studio shot. It is a composite image showing a range of sea creatures that were all photographed on white backgrounds and then combined in Photoshop. The setup used a white plastic food tray filled with sea water, with a flash below to create a clean white background. A second flash was positioned above to stop the subjects being silhouetted.

Rockpool creatures and seaweeds, photographed on a white background in mobile field studio. Isle of Skye, Inner Hebrides, Scotland, UK. March. Digital composite.

All images and text copyright Alex Hyde – www.alexhyde.co.uk