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This shot has been done a million times, but this was the first time for me, and it was nice to actually not be on a schedule as my other half was at work and I had nowhere to be. So I did the tourist thing and just looked at everything.

Budweiser gets everywhere it would seem. Filthy American lager - I would have been much happier to find a bottle of Bulmers left there.

I didn’t stay for the wedding that was being setup - I expect the photographer was earning a nice tidy sum as weddings at Leeds Castle don’t come cheap.

I had some good fortune whilst doing the tourist thing. A large American got chatting to me whilst I was looking over the wall. I can only assume it was the combination of my LA Lakers shirt, big ass Nikon and friendly face that made him ask for some advice on using his Nikon D40x. He explained that his brother had bought him it for his UK trip and that he had no idea how to shoot in anything other than Auto. My helpful streak leapt into gear and I took a few shots of his kid and wife for him (so his brother would be impressed) and passed on a few tips. Whilst us English struggle with the tipping thing, the Americans don’t and he insisted on paying me twenty pounds. I tried to hand it back but he was adamant (and big) so I reluctantly accepted the kind gesture. He went off happy and I went off slightly richer… for a few minutes at least.

The RSPB had a recruitment tent set up by the moat (and swan feeding area - clever marketing) with a few scopes pointing around the place. Just before I got to the tent I bought a particularly cold White Magnum but I fancied having a look through some of the scopes, just to see how good they were. Anyway, the heady mix of earning twenty quid and the time it took me to eat the ice cream made me a target for the girl in the tent and, after seeing the map of RSPB reserves,  somehow I ended up agreeing to join them. I felt slightly good about myself for doing my bit for charity, especially I effectively got £20 off the price for helping the American.

It was nice to see a fellow D200 shooter, even if she looked bored as hell.

There were lots of bubbles being created by parents eager to appease their screaming children. I like bubbles. Much nicer than silly string.

Ooooo and they had a bird of prey section. I am a sucker for some raptor action. 

Young fools. Old fools. Once i was one of these fools that attempted the maze. Never again. If my other half is reading this at any point - never again. I shall gladly watch from the sidelines. My brain can’t handle mazes.

I admit that Leeds Castle is probably a fairly safe venue, but I wouldn’t leave my kid all alone, not with that many geese…

The Hooper Swan is quite rare apparently, though there were quite a few waddling about.

Now that I have my ticket for the year I shall try my very best to go back before it runs out. Time (and no doubt this blog) will tell if I succeed.

The weather started looking very dodgy as we got there so we sought refuge in the stands.

The rain passed pretty quickly though and the serious issue of form studying began. I was determined to be slightly more successful than last time, which, in theory, was going to be possible since I only had to pick one winner (or place) in six races.

I was tempted by this horse as it clearly looked insane (a tactic that worked for me one year), but plumped for Right Stuff (below). It was the favourite, but this is Folkestone, and they have a habit of winning most of the time.

On a side issue, they appear to make St. John’s Ambulance people quite big these days.

Awww, the birthday boy. Happy Birthday mate. It was later revealed he did very badly in the betting game.

Gone are the days of betting with the Tote - I use these real things outside with people shouting out stuff I don’t understand.

Just to prove the Right Stuff pick wasn’t a fluke, I followed that up with a nice each way winner…

There is now a large gap in the photography as the adrenalin of the racing took over and I picked another winner, finishing up for only the second time. After the races the Kylie tribute started and Mr Minns’ drunkenness reached new heights.

It is probably necessary to show that I wasn’t the only photographer taking photos of Kylie(ish) and her dancers. His beard is way bigger than mine.

Kylie(ish) was pretty good. I expect she would have been even better if I had consumed 8 Magners, but despite the rain she gave it a good go. Her performance was enhanced by the dancers according to the men in the crowd.

All in all, a good evening, proving that sometimes one can beat the bookie. I am off to buy the Racing Post.

Aside from the venue, the do itself was great fun - it was nice to not have the pressure of taking photos so I could just relax and um, well, take photos. Anyway, here are a few of my faves, with the FULL SET AVAILABLE HERE.

Please Note: If you goto visit the full set please note the amusing boquet tossing (photos 11-16)…

Michelle looked stunning and the dress was amazing. We would like to say a big thanks for the invite and we had a really great night. Hope the honeymoon was cool!

This sit and wait approach has served me well in the past, but not this time. I did have a few visitors though. There were lots of Butterflies - many different species actually, so, rather than wait for the elusive Dragonfly, I got busy with them instead.

It has become clear to me that I may have to invest in a decent insect book. The Collins Gem guides I have are far too small to identify most species. I know precious little about Butterflies, but I suppose it might be a Grayling. Please correct me if I am wrong.

I am fairly sure this is a Red Admiral, but it was damn pretty nonetheless and stood out well. Quite lucky to get this one as it was very skittish.

The good thing about Butterflies is that they tend to land on the ground and I much prefer taking macro shots while laying down, so I was particularly pleased when this little fella fancied a rest.

This next one might be a Little Skipper, or in fact a Large Skipper. It may be neither. I am a photographer, not a biology student

By this point I had given up actually taking a pic of a Dragonfly - they were happily buzzing around me but refusing to settle. So I decided to cut my losses and leave, with the intention of maybe stopping off somewhere on the way home. As i was leaving I noticed this thing on a leaf. Not sure what this is and my attempts to identify it have failed thus far. It looks a bit Hover-fly/Wasp/Hornet to me.

Driving back down Bluebell Hill I had the desire for an ice cream, so I dropped by Tyland Barn, headquarters of the Kent Wildlife Trust. I think I might join the Trust as they seem to do some good work. From their website:

Founded in 1958, Kent Wildlife Trust is the leading conservation charity for Kent and Medway – protecting wildlife, educating the public, influencing decision makers and restoring habitats.

Our reserves include a range of habitats of extraordinary beauty, that accommodate much endangered wildlife. The Trust manages over 59 reserves covering more than 3,000 hectares of land for wildlife including over 55 miles of roadside reserve.

(incidentally they sell Thornton’s Toffee Ice Creams and they are lush). Whilst eating my ice cream a Dragonfly settled nearby, so I figured my luck was changing.

Just for good measure, there seemed to be an abundance of Meadow Grasshoppers - hard to spot but out of the corner of my eye I saw one jumping and followed him.

I went for a little stroll around after this to stretch my legs and wandered past some massive stinging nettles that were blowing in the wind. Attached to one of them was this Speckled Bush Cricket. Not as sharp as i would like as the wind was pretty fierce and the nettle nearly stung my face a few times.  No pain no gain I guess.

As I got back to the pond, I saw another Dragonfly settle on the bench. It seemed rude to ignore it.

All in all, not a bad haul for a couple of hours on a Sunday. I recommend both Beacon Wood Country Park and Tyland Barn for a lazy Sunday’s bug hunting. I expect these will be the last Dragonfly shots I get this summer… but hey, that’s the fun of bug hunting.

Whilst shooting panoramas digitally is arguably more complex than using a specialised film camera, the ability to employ much more experimental and contemporary post-processing is particularly appealing to me.  Photo stitching software is getting pretty good these days and on a fairly recent trip to Norfolk I tried my first hand-held panorama. There is clearly some distortion but I was pleased with this first attempt as I was stood on the top a sand dune having no real idea of what i was doing. The theory was sound and it forced some more research.

Much of the sane advice suggests using a tripod (obviously) as that should make the job of stitching a lot easier, but for the best results it is sensible to invest in a proper panoramic tripod head. There are a few on the market these days but I kept reading good things about the Nodal Ninja NN3 MK II. There only seems to be a few retailers selling this kit in the UK, so I got mine from Red Door. The Nodal Ninja is a specially designed spherical tripod head allowing the photographer to adjust a camera/lens “entrance pupil” [nodal point] exactly over its correct rotational axis. This helps to eliminate parallax error inherent when shooting multiple images side by side. This all sounded fascinating, if a little baffling, but I still ordered one.

Nodal Ninja NN3 Mk II kit

Thankfully it all came pre-built and I only had to attach the lower and upper arms. This is easy and it was fairly simple to set up the correct setting for my camera/lens combo. There are numerous places online that have sample setups and the correct distances to set both arms at.

One of the key features of this head is the ability to shot 360 degree panoramas with ease, and this was the clincher for me. Arguably the best lenses to use to shoot 360 panos are fisheye lenses as you ultimately need to take less shots. Fortunately I have the wonderfully titled Tokina AT-X 107 DX Fisheye. God knows what made Tokina make a 10-17mm fisheye zoom, but never mind; on my D200 it gives 180 degrees of coverage at 10mm and with some decent overlapping of shots this means I can do a 360 pano is 12 shots (probably less when I get a bit more used to the whole process).

I have only taken a handful of shots so far, and one of the first is included below. After doing some reading I decided to give Autopano Pro a try and it seems a lot adept at this sort of thing than Photoshop’s photomerge feature. This image was 12 shots at 10mm in Mote Park, Maidstone, Kent.

It had been a couple of years since I had made this far into Mote Park and this little building has been on my photo to-do list for a long time. However, the reason I picked this location was mainly because I have also become fascinated with the creation of ‘little planets’ - wrapping 360 degree shots in on themselves, creating the effect below.

There is a good tutorial on on how to create these here. 

Not content with two different results from the one photos (ok 12 photos), I also wanted to explore the potential for interactive panoramas. These have been used for a while in the tourism industry and now most venues wanting to show off their facilities are using them. Some net searching pointed me at Pano2VR by Garden Gnome Software. This is a really nice, simple and well built piece of software and being available for the Mac and Linux made me smile. Anyway, here is the same shot rendered as an interactive experience.

To view this larger click here. The experiments shall continue.

Recently a community-driven restoration scheme has been completed just up the road, so we took a walk around the Bearsted Woodland Trust site. Photographically it was quite uneventful but I shall go back there as it is a free walk around a nicely landscaped area. I did see one Ladybird and felt obliged to take a pic. 

One of the footpaths into the Trust area runs past the Holy Cross Church, and, as I had only taken a couple of photos by this point, I felt the need for some fish eye church action.

It may have escaped your attention, but the title of this post hinted heavily that there may be some Grasshoppers involved at some point. Everyone knows that ‘Grasshopper sound’ and it seems hard to go anywhere remotely field-like on a hot summer day and not hear the chirpy chrous ringing out. When I am out and hear it I am always aware of the fact that it will probably never lead to a decent photograph as the Grasshopper can be quite elusive - it really is a needle in a haystack type situation. 

However, sometimes you get lucky.

As we arrived back home and walked up the path, the front lawn (for lawn read unkempt scrubland) was alive with movement. Closer inspection revealed there to be an invasion of Field Grasshoppers. The macro lens was re-applied and I spent a rather hot twenty minutes laying on the ground watching Grasshoppers jump past my face… and here are the results…

Perhaps the moral of this story is always look close to home as you never know what you will find. I woke up fairly early this morning to see if they were still going mad, only to find that it was pouring with rain. The Great British summer continues to delight and frustrate.

I bet on every race and won nothing, so no real change from last year. It re-affirms my belief that gambling and me do not mix.

Sure, I *could* have bet on the favourites as they won 5 out of 6 races, but where is the fun in that? (Note: Adam’s only win was a 2-1 dead cert, netting him a massive £10 win, tho to see his face after winning probably proved that any win is good.).

Anyway, here are the photos I took, far less than I intended to, but hey ho.

(Click image to view it large).

The food was expectedly vastly over-priced, but the burgers were big.

Awwww, love’s young dream.

It is time and effort studying the form that lead to the 2-1 win. I now regret the lack of attention I paid to the printed form guide.

The Eyebrow infiltrates another shot…

…and is joined my more Eyebrow action. I find too much Eyebrow action disturbing.

Winning tickets! Not mine of course.

I can’t say the Scissor Sisters tribute band was really my bag, but it gave a perfect excuse for jazz hands!

I visited the site to discover that this self portrait had been voted Noteworthy for their challenge ‘The Office’. I am pleased as this is the fourth time other photo bloggers have voted a photo of mine Noteworthy. I hope I got the votes because of the image and not because i have some resemblance to David Brent.

Update 1: The Muffins are good

Fresh Banana Muffins

Update 2: They *look* good, but needed longer in the oven.